Two for the Price of One

Just when I was starting to wonder when the Deep Space Climate Observatory would get around to providing full-Earth pictures on the promised "regular" schedule after its first public debut, I ran into another striking one on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site.



It's almost the same face of Earth as before (and again, I happened to notice there aren't any clouds over the Central Valley of California), but the "guest star" of the picture stands out, even if the far side of the moon isn't as photogenic as the one that's fixed our way. In thinking ahead from the specific to the pictures still to come, though, I did fixate for a moment on a bit of the first blurb I saw that said "about twice a year"; this, however, is just referring to how often the moon will get in the way (just as there isn't a solar eclipse every full moon).