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Earth light: Terrestrial vegetation detected in the spectrum of the earthshine
January 23, 2002A team including Pierre Riaud and Jean Schneider of the Observatoire de Paris and Luc Arnold, Sophie Gillet and Olivier Lardie're of the Observatoire de Haute Provence detected for the first time the color characteristic of the terrestrial vegetation in the "Earthshine", i.e. the dark part of the Moon only hit by the Earth light. To observe the light of the Earth by reflexion on the Moon enables to characterize the aspect of our planet as seen by a remote observer. It prepares the detection of extra-solar planets similar to the Earth.
The observations were made from April 2001 (and some are still being done) at the 80 cm telescope of the OHP. At the time of the observations reported here (last December) in the morning the Moon sees Asia and in the evening it sees America (Northern and Southern). Similar observations were made at the Steward Observatory (Arizona) from June 2001.
Why not be satisfied with the direct observation of the terrestrial vegetation seen from satellites of the SPOT type or others? Because those do not see the Earth from a remote enough point, thus do not have an instantaneous global vision of it. Moreover they have only a quasi vertical vision of the terrestrial ground and thus do not take account of all angles of sight, and of the effects of absorption due to the oblique crossing of the atmospheric layers. So the conditions of observation similar to that of a remote extra-solar planet are not met. On the contrary, the Moon being far enough from the Earth, it sees it overall; moreover the roughness of its surface makes that it reflects in all the directions the terrestrial light, thus mixing the luminous rays resulting from all the terrestrial areas, which makes it possible to have the average color of the Earth.
Moreover, the Earth is the only planet of the solar system to have the blue color characteristic of its atmospheric scattering; the atmosphere of Mars is too tenuous and that of Venus too opaque to have this blue color. This color will thus be a simple, but invaluable indicator for the studies of exobiology, of the state of the atmosphere of an extra-solar planet.
Observatoire de Paris and CNRS
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