A year of Earth: Stunning video reveals 365 days of pictures from Nasa satelite

One million miles away from our planet sits Nasa’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, which has been stationed between the sun and Earth since February 2015.

From this spot, EPIC has captured more than 3,000 stunning images of the Earth as it makes the 365 day journey around the bright ball of gas.

Now, Nasa has revealed a stunning team of EPIC used these images to create a stunning timelapse of its time in orbit, the Daily Mail reports.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) DSCOVR satellite is the nation's first operational satellite in deep space. 

DSCOVR is stationed between the sun and the Earth in special gravitational balance point known as Lagrange 1 and has remained there since it reached the orbit.

From here, the satellite can provide advanced solar measurements and early warnings of potentially dangerous space weather events, acting as a solar storm buoy in deep space. 

“On July 16, 2015 we released this spectacular image of Earth taken by Nasa’s EPIC camera,” Jay Herman, the EPIC lead scientists for the DSCOVR mission, said the Nasa video.

“Now we assembled more than 3,000 images captured by EPIC into a time-lapse sequence.”

“The hourly images of the entire sunlit side of the Earth provided by EPIC will be used to study the daily variations of features over the entire globe, helping us to better understand and protect our home planet.”

EPIC takes a new picture of the Earth every two hours, which allows it to capture the movement of the fluffy clouds and patterned weather systems.

It is also able to gather shots of the deserts, green forests and the deep blue seas.

The images taken from the satellite reveal a haze around the edges that is caused by the scattering of light molecules in the atmosphere, which is also what makes the sky blue during the day and red when the sun sets.

"The colours shown are our best estimate of what a human sitting at the location of EPIC would see," explains Herman.

EPIC snaps at least one set of images every two hours and records each set in 10 different wavelengths

And the colour view humans see is actually produce by three separate wavelengths – red, green and blue.

Together they create the marble looking ball we see in most images sent back from space.

“Although the view from EPIC is only once every two hours, we’re able to track features like the motion of clouds,” says Herman.

He continues to explain that about two-thirds of our planet is covered by clouds, which reflect light from the sun and help keep Earth cool.

“Changes in cloud cover affect the heat balance and how warm the Earth becomes which is one of the reasons why we study them,” he explained.

Not only does EPIC help experts understand our planet, but it is also used to monitor ozone and aerosols levels in the atmosphere, cloud height, vegetation properties and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth.