Signs of life on Earth live in Earthshine — the sunlight that passes through Earth’s atmosphere, bounces off the moon and returns to observers on the ground. Now, a team of scientists reports in the March 1 Nature that Earthshine (visible as the dimmer portion of the moon above the bright crescent) not only carries the signatures of molecules such as oxygen, ozone and water, but reveals details like the percentage of cloud and vegetation cover for a given planetscape.
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