Mysterious solar flashes on Earth have been captured by NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), which orbits Earth at a distance of a million miles.
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The spacecraft has captured hundreds of strange flashes radiating all over our planet. NASA's EPIC camera which was first launched in 2015 captured these light flashes reflecting off Earth.
But this is not the first time that such flashes have been observed. These strange light flashes were initially detected by astronomer Carl Sagan in 1993 with the help of photos taken by Galileo spacecraft.
As per speculations made by researchers, these reflections could be due to ice particles, which prevail high in the atmosphere.
These occasionally appearing light flashes, visible over the oceans, were initially noticed by Alexander Marshak, DSCOVR deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center when he viewed EPIC's photos of the day.
"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," Marshak said.
"We found quite a few very bright flashes over land as well. 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," he added.
A total of 866 light flashes were observed between DSCOVR's launch in June 2015 and August 2016. The scientists articulated that if these 866 flashes were caused by reflected sunlight they would be restricted to some particular spots on Earth where the angle between the planet and Sun is same as the angle between Earth and the spacecraft, which allows the spacecraft to capture the reflected light.
When the spot of the flashes were plotted by researchers, Earth's tilt and spacecraft's locations were found to match, a NASA statement revealed.
Check out this video to understand the phenomenon better:
