What is the furthest distance that is regarded as low Earth orbit
I had no idea, so I googled. It is between 200 and 2000 km.
can't Earth's entire size be taken with a wide angled camera from low Earth orbit?
No.
From 200 km, with 151.72
o wide view (any greater will not provide more area) you can only see 2x14.14
o large piece.
From 2000 km, with 99.26
o wide view you can see 2x40.37
o large piece.
Explaination - Seeing 2x A
o piece means that when you fix your position over the north pole, you would be able to see everything up to (90-A)
o parallel. This is basically your angular radius of sight.
To see the entire size you would have to see 2x90
o, which happens only when you are infinitely far (in theory...).
DSCOVR, placed in L
1, 1,500,000 km away, can see ~99.5% of Earth's size.
Numbers are approximations, small errors are expected.