DSCOVR EPIC Images Earth
Deep Space Climate Observatory Captures EPIC Earth Image
“A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away.”
“This color image of Earth was taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters — from ultraviolet to near infrared — to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images.”
A huge victory for Goresat!
Excellent, splendid! It will be a daily reminder of the oneness of our world.
Question for the experts. A few hours ago Quartz ran a story on the DSCOVR image under the headline “Behold: NASA’s first image of the whole Earth in decades.” It claims that this is the first full disc image of the Earth taken by a NASA spacecraft since 1972. Link here:
http://qz.com/458826/behold…
Does that strike anyone as over-sell? LRO has taken several full-disc images, no? Thoughts?
How does one define a full-disc image? There’s loads of geocynchronous satellites, why don’t those count as full-disc? They can see 42% of earth and more distant vantage points only approach 50% (not counting refraction). So where’s the cutoff?
A $340M picture. Nice.
That’s only if you ignore everything else in DSCOVR’s mission.
http://www.airspacemag.com/…
Does not really seem to be the way science missions should be selected or funded.
That article implies that it could have been launched at half the price in 2003 but was put on hold due to politics.
“Does not really seem to be the way science missions should be deselected or defunded.”
I was referring the part about it being funded from from other mission and zipping through the approval process at warp speed, well befor 2003. The entire mission is a political statement and a waste of money to support someone laughing all the way to the bank while flying his private jet spewing out copious amount of CO2.
The politics of it are indeed interesting, but the reason it was launched is we were losing our solar weather observatory and DSCVR could do the job. The Earth pointing cameras are a bonus but there is not much money at NASA to do analysis so that is going to be bootlegged by universities and amateurs.
The original Triana was not very strong scientifically, but the reconfigured DSCVR was certainly a major improvement and worth doing. The politics hit at the other end when the Bushies killed off Goresat
Be that as it may, it would be really excellent to have another DSCVR in the opposing lagrange point to observe the entire sphere.
“a fiscally out-of-control rush job of dubious scientific merit.”
That sounds about right.
Nice, but the tilt may be off. I don’t think Florida is tilted that much to the SE.
Brilliant pic. We’re blessed to be on such a beautiful planet.