NASA launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft to the neutral gravity Lagrange point 1 (L1) in 2015. one project onboard uses NASA's Earth Polychriomatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is pointed back at Earth (from about a million miles away). EPIC makes images with 10 different filters (from ultraviolet, through the visible spectrum, to near infrared) and generates "natural color" images of Earth by combining red, blue & green channel images. NASA releases some of EPIC's images at https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
on July 5, 2016, EPIC recorded a lunar transit of Earth (over the course of about 4 hours). in the images, both Earth and our Moon are brightly lit up (both spotlighted by our Sun from the perspective of the spacecraft positioned almost a million miles closer to our Sun). our Moon is tidally locked to Earth (so observers on Earth always see the same side of the Moon). this image shows the far side of the Moon (visible only from space).
this cascading accordion stitches together all 15 images released from the 2016 lunar transit of Earth alongside 10 additional EPIC images of Earth (completing 24 hours / one full rotation across the work). the images are presented side-by-side, in sequence (3.5 inches height by width expandable to 7.75 feet).
full color inkjet print (mix of 11 pigment inks) on superheavyweight matte plus paper (first materializing as a 12x36” print and then cut, hand-folded, seamed, pressed, and sleeved in studio)
