WASHINGTON, DC — One million miles from Earth, a NASA camera is capturing unexpected flashes of light reflecting off our planet.
The homeward-facing instrument on NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, launched in 2015, caught hundreds of these flashes over the span of a year. NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) instrument aboard DSCOVR is taking almost-hourly images of the sunlit planet from its spot between Earth and the sun. In a new study, scientists deciphered the tiny cause to the big reflections: high-altitude, horizontally oriented ice crystals.
“The source of the flashes is definitely not on the ground,” said Alexander Marshak, DSCOVR deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It’s definitely ice, and most likely solar reflection off of horizontally oriented particles.”
Detecting glints like this from much farther away could be used by other spacecraft to study exoplanets, Marshak said. He is now investigating how common these horizontal ice particles are and whether they’re common enough to have a measureable impact on how much sunlight passes through the atmosphere. If so, it’s a feature that could be incorporated into computer models of how much heat is reaching and leaving Earth, he said.
Spotting bright flashes
Marshak first noticed light flashes occasionally appearing over oceans as he looked through daily EPIC images. Investigating them further, Marshak and his colleagues found similar reflections from our pale blue dot caught the attention of astronomer Carl Sagan in 1993. Sagan was looking at images taken by the Galileo spacecraft, which launched in 1989 to study Jupiter and its moons. During one if its gravitational-assist swings around Earth, Galileo turned its instruments on this planet and collected data. Sagan and his colleagues used that to test a key question: whether spacecraft could detect signatures of life from afar.
“Large expanses of blue ocean and apparent coastlines are present, and close examination of the images shows a region of [mirror-like] reflection in ocean but not on land,” they wrote of the glints.
Flashes of light reflected off oceans – like those referenced by Sagan – could have a simple explanation, Marshak said: sunlight hits a smooth part of an ocean or lake, and reflects directly back to the sensor, like taking a flash-picture in a mirror.
But when the scientists took another look at the Galileo images, they saw something Sagan and his colleagues apparently missed – bright flashes of light over land as well. As the contact listed on the website that posts all EPIC images, Marshak started getting emails from people curious about what the flashes were.
“We found quite a few very bright flashes over land as well,” he said. “When I first saw it I thought maybe there was some water there, or a lake the sun reflects off of. But the glint is pretty big, so it wasn’t that.”
Instead, he and his colleagues thought of water elsewhere in the Earth system: ice particles high in the atmosphere. They then conducted a series of experiments to confirm the cause of the distant flashes.
First, they cataloged all prospective sunlight glints over land in images from the EPIC camera and found 866 bursts between DSCOVR’s launch in June 2015 and August 2016.
They reasoned that if these 866 flashes were caused by reflected sunlight, they would be limited to certain spots on the globe – spots where the angle between the sun and Earth is the same as the angle between the spacecraft and Earth. When they plotted the locations of the glints with those angles, given Earth’s tilt and the spacecraft’s location, the two matched.
This helped confirm that it wasn’t something like lightning causing the flashes. “Lightning doesn’t care about the sun and EPIC’s location,” Marshak said.
Another feature of the EPIC data helped confirm that the flashes were from a high altitude, not simply water on the ground. Two channels on the instrument are designed to measure the height of clouds, and when the scientists went to the data they found high cirrus clouds, 5 to 8 kilometers (3 to 5 miles) where the glints were located.
(Via NASA Goddard Spaceflight center)
It must be a mighty big flash when picked up by a camera a million miles away. The light source shown by the dot on the picture must be huge if one relates the size of the light dot to the size of the earth shown in the picture – 2mm to a 160mm earth. This puts the width of the beam 1/80th of the diameter of the earth. Making the source circa 100 miles across.
If the ‘flash’ is indeed a reflection of the sun then it would be an extremely brief flash due to the earths rotation as the million mile beam would cross the camera lens in milliseconds. Logic therefore suggests that it is something like an area of sea or water that creates a solar reflection that could be in existence at all times when the sun gets through, but would reflect to the cameras lens only very, very occasionally. when the beams direction coincides with the crossing of the beam by the camera..
New budget, new disinfo, to prop up a failing institution. Our program is way behind and tell me how can Humans pass thru van allen belt to get to moon
[??? .mod]
Yes, small ice crystals (known as diamond dust) can become orientated, presumably because of their long rhomboid shape and the airflow they are situated in. And then they can reflect or refract light in a particular direction.
Take a look at this image, where diamond-dust is refracting streetlight in specific directions, to form tall pillars of light.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/01/13/11/3C04491300000578-4116808-image-a-12_1484307443022.jpg
Static charge would also align ice crystals.
Now we’re getting somewhere. We need to know what polarizes the ice crystals.
[The usual. Politics, racism, global warming, religion, sexism, ageism, poverty, George Soros. …. .mod]
interesting photo , similar to others provided, but I question your interpretation of light being refracted into vertical beams. What you are assuming is that there is a vertical beam from which some light is being scattered back to the ground.
The source of light is at ground level, behind the trees. The observer is at ground level and some of the light, presumably radiating in all directions from the alleged street lights is being refracted or scattered back down to the ground based observer.
What I suspect we would see, if lamps were raise well above the ground, is a cross of light beams going symmetrically left/right ; up / down. The typical ‘star’ often seen in photos or films of bright lights.
These are from the support structure inside the telescope they’re called diffraction spikes.
From Wiki
>>What you are assuming is that there is a vertical beam from
>>which some light is being scattered back to the ground.
Not assuming that at all. These are omni-directional surface light sources, from which only ice crystals in a certain location-orientation to the observer are refracting-reflecting the light.
It is like a vertical rainbow. A rainbow will only be seen in specific locations of the sky, and not in others. Only difference is the rainbow forms a curve while this phenomina forms a vertical line.
R
Not the only difference. Another one is there is no obvious spectral diffusion here. It’s nothing like a vertical rainbow.
I agree that it is to do with the relative position of the observer. That was my point. I see no evidence from the photos nor the recollection from air force base in 1960s that there actually is a vertical column of light. There are no accounts of this being seen from the air. It seems to depend upon the position of a ground based observer. ie there is no vertical column of light. Just like you cannot fly around a rainbow: it is a virtual image, only visible from a limited range of observational positions.
It does seem to indicate a degree of orientation since it is not a haze like that which would be seen in foggy conditions.
I think this is consistent with long horizontally aligned crystals, randomly oriented in the other two axes, or horizontal plates ( which implies two axes being constrained ).
My observations would seem to require uniformly oriented plates, as suggested for the NASA glints.
If this is plates in the “beam” photos we are seeing an image of the light source which is diffuse in one direction only due to a continuum of heights containing reflecting particles. As I stated earlier about my observation, there is only very limited vertical spreading, indicating that only a very thin ( top? ) layer of the cloud is involved.
This suggests a boundary condition phenomenon between the zone of low altitude freezing conditions and higher warmer, non freezing conditions, as shown in the radiosonde data that I linked to.
Thanks for your comment, helped me firm up my ideas.
Bottom line: this is not a vertical column of light : it will not be seen to illuminate an object put in its path, like flying a zeppelin over the area and expecting to see circles on light on it.
It is a reflection of the street lamp object which is diffused in one direction only as seen from the ground. If there were a non freezing zone at ground level the “beams” would appear to start in mid-air.
Ah, I made a prediction and I have found confirmation:
http://oddstuffmagazine.com/wonderful-weather-pictures-with-lightning-snow-and-ice-20-pics.html/weather-14
Note the “beam” above the group of four trees at the bottom, right of the image. Beam very weak low down , almost disappearing, stronger higher up. This is a vertically diffused reflection ( linear blur) of the lamp.
It remains to explain the mechansim which is orienting the ice crystals.
I’m not sure you have to, you have trillions of ice crystals in random orientation, some percentage will always be the proper angle to your location. What limits the viewing angle of this effect, is the angle of the sun, and the observer from each other. A suggestion of a reason, the angle of the crystals would not matter.
Greg, Hypothetically, what sort of a reflective light flash would a small, disintegrating, comet produce as it entered the mesosphere? Wouldn’t it be similar to what is being imaged by the EPIC devices aboard the DSCOVR spacecraft?
TRUMP 2016
If point sources of light look like that, then why wouldn’t escaping long wave radiation also look like that? Randomly orientated ice crystals for the streetlight example, randomly emitting water vapor and other such gasses in the second example. If you measured light intensity on a non icy night, then measured it on an icy night, would the “downwelling” light be what one would expect?
They say we are entering an Ice age. Maybe, there is an increase in ice particles in our atmosphere because the earth is cooling?
Meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere. There, I said it.
Stop printing lies. Ain’t no curvature on the earth. Fake pic . You guys should know better by now.
I don’t really think light reflecting off ice in the atmosphere is all that mysterious.
None of this is true. It is 100% fiction. A “fluff piece”, created from thin air. That is not a video of earth. Notice that ALL images from NASA depict a PERFECTLY SPHERICAL planet. Every time. Yet NASA constantly states earth is obloid, or “pear-shaped (Tyson). The earth is not a sphere. The images are CGI, and there are ZERO “space satellites” over 400 miles from earth. The VAN ALLEN radiation belts will destroy the electronics of anything that goes beyond 700 miles of so from earth. NASA is in the same business that Disney is in: selling fantasy to the gullible for money.
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Jeez. Check out just how oblate the Earth ( allegedly ) is and then post back with whether you would expect to see it with the naked eye on that image.
You are the kind of non thinking guy who gives conspiracy theories a bad name and makes a whole big hiding space for real conspirators because no one thinks real conspiracies exist any more.
Unscientific Americain tells us:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-is-not-round/
Earth’s center to sea level is roughly 21 kilometers (13 miles) greater at the equator than at the poles.
Do you expect to see that against a diameter of 12,742 km when eyeballing a youtube vid ?????
If you want to argue that NASA are faking it , you’re going to need to try a little harder in your science classes, or smoke less pot.
Hmm, did you accidentally post this here instead of CNN ?
information could be used in planet hunting, earth like atmosphere ect ect
These flashes of light most likely are reflections off flying aircraft windshields.
I’m shocked that it’s not due to anthropomorphic global climate change. SHOCKED!
“anthropomorphic global climate change” ? Is that climate change with two arms and legs a goofy smile ? LOL
When my space ship drops out of warp drive it produces the flash. People on earth don’t see this because of the cloaking of the earth side of my ship. Captain Nemo
Maybe flashes are from telescopes looking at the camera, or N Korea testing missiles, or your mom [pruned]….who cares, stop wasting time and money looking for stupid [pruned]…..there are people starving that this could have fed. Maybe fill them up with this knowledge?
Dear MOD, what is the difference between “pruned” and “snipped” ??
When you get snipped you can’t have any more children. Be happy that you just got pruned.
Did Sagan suffer confirmation bias? Were the bright flashes over the ocean the same ice crystals? Once one sees a reflection from the oceans then why not look for more from the oceana? Voila! A habitable planet.
Hasn’t anyone ever taken a broken mirror to the dump?
They witnessed a typical weekend on the streets of Chicago.
Why don’t they post a pic of it? I swear every time NASA talks about something going on with planet earth they never show a pic and if they do show a pic its a fake pic of planet earth. Why must every pic of earth be fake?!? I wanna see real pics of our planet! Why should we keep funding NASA when they won’t even show us real pics of the earth
How about showing us a “real” pic of planet earth. Why is it that every time NASA shows a pic of planet earth its fake? NASA gets funded how many millions a year and they can’t even show us a real pic of planet earth
That’s the reflection off of Obama’s or Gore’s huge motorcade taking them to the next climate conference.
It’s caused by man made climate change ..like everything else.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”
Richard P. Feynman
I know what it is causing that flash NASA spotted in space it’s a alien hybrid named daemon azel and I warned humanity and trump about hiss arrival and if government wanted that alien hybrid stoped they will have to have the healthcare system doctors specialists hospitals start me on the pain medicine I want dilaudid ketamine valium if not exsistance of time and outer space will be destroyed and I would allow it because of the government health care systems doctors specialists hospitals have already failed me and ruined my life 1 to many times
Ummm, I hope you meant to add a “SARC” to that, or at least a “LOL”…If not, you definitely need medication….
Very weird that they would use a satellite image containing clouds of the Nibiru Ship, currently parked right outside of earth. Check your skies often. I have caught the many objects in this system. No planets I can see, just a ship! And a creatively large one at that.
NASA is extremely good at getting into the minds of people and putting them on a path far away from reality. Again, This photo includes many of the shapes in which the Sumerian Babylonian tablets have outlined. This is how they get everyone on a side quest to keep inquiring minds at bay. An ancient technology ship arrived approximately one year or so ago and NASA documented that as well, they just don’t know I received the images. The Ship has slowly approached and has been giving us quite a show during the nights and days recently. A UV producing Nibiru winged disc totem along the horizon provides a light source which can produce holographic projection imagery when many objects from the ship are deployed. A lot of this has been effectively hidden from sight. Everyone is missing quite an interesting phenomena at the moment.
Donald, I spend a lot of time out in the middle of the night taking pictures of galaxies. What exactly should I be looking for and where, because I have yet to see anything at all.
The UV winged disk totem sticks up along the horizon, bouncing up and down and side to side. It moves around tremendously. due to it emitting UV light we do not see it easily, but I’m able to locate and find it once I understood all of this. The winged disc totem, when it is really active, does give off star-like sparks and that has helped me follow it around on those particular nights. It is also displayed during the daytime which is even more difficult to see against a blue sky. I have no way of predicting when things are at their height but last night was pretty active and it’s been getting more active on a daily basis versus over the course of the last several months it was only say 2 nights in a month. In addition to the totem our skies are generally filled with objects and projected, weird shaped things associated to this system. I definitely think a lot of it is projected in some form. I perform time-lapse photography almost every night for many hours and when I render the images with added color corrections I’m able to produce a lot of animated moving objects all around the sky. Although those could be projections as well into the camera lens. Otherwise with the naked eye everything at night appears with very faint wandering star lights associated with all of these things. You really go to look hard and with an open mind. There was however, at night, last Saturday May 13th. The night sky was filled with weird sometimes creepy objects slowly meandering around. I’m getting ready to upload a video to my YouTube channel in the next 2 hours showing one of these objects around the “moon”. My YouTube name is playjays. I have been attempting to document this arrival and what is going on for the past year up until now. Due to all of the recent activity with all of this I’m adding something daily. Glad you are interested! Perform an image search on Sumerian tablet imagery as it sort of is the blueprint for this phenomenon. I don’t know what it all means or what it all points too going forward. It’s happening now and seeing where it goes I guess. I started following this subject after studying ancient cultures like Egypt. I found something that indicated this would arrive last year and just as it arrived I was able to briefly obtain NASA HI2 Stereo images of them focusing on the many parts of this ship. I guess I was the only one waiting for it.