This beautiful Nasa gif is truly mesmerising

It looks like something from a 1980s BBC ident, but this is a series of captivating images taken of the moon crossing the Earth, from a million miles away.

The pictures were taken by the appropriately named Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (Epic), which is somewhere between the Sun and the Earth on Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

They were taken last month and show the dark side of the moon that is never visible from Earth, and was not observed by humans until 1959.

Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, said:

It is surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon. Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface.

One final thought, Epic has a four-megapixel camera - the iPhone's camera is eight-megapixel.

More: This six-second video of the Earth is mesmerising