DocM Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasa-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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggendrop Veteran Posted July 31, 2015 Veteran Share Posted July 31, 2015 Found various wallpapers of this shot that DocM displayed in above post.... This spectacular space wallpaper shows the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite's first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth, taken from one million miles away on July 6, 2015. DSCOVR is operated by a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, Wallpaper sizes are at this link.... http://www.space.com/30014-epic-image-sunlit-earth-wallpaper.html Cheers..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 (edited) Far side of the Moon from DSCOVR's perspective Draggendrop 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggendrop Veteran Posted August 11, 2015 Veteran Share Posted August 11, 2015 Here's a bit of a twist....the reason this shot (upper posts) was able to be done.....because this satellite was not going to leave Earth .......the story.... The Satellite That Took This Incredible Photo Almost Didn’t Leave Earth Over the last few weeks, we’ve been treated to the first amazing images coming back from the satellite, which reached its geostationary home on June 7 (it took a little while to ramp up its photo-taking abilities). Never before has a satellite been able to send back images capturing all of the planet in a single frame at these resolutions. But that Earth-facing imagery is the result of a historical accident. DSCOVR stands for Deep Space Climate Observatory (as long as we’re getting creative with acronyms, I would’ve called it DiSCO), and it’s a joint mission between NASA and NOAA. Back in the late 1990s, NASA had to put the satellite (then called Triana) on hold because the Bush Administration and members of Congress started questioning its scientific worth. The controversy surrounded the EPIC imager (seriously NASA, these acronyms…), which measures ozone and UV rays for climate science, and also takes pictures in the visible light spectrum. After the Bush ages, NOAA succeeded in getting the thing out of mothballs because it needed a replacement for the aging deep space probe responsible for measuring solar wind. DSCOVR was already built and paid for ($100 million), and it already had the tools for measuring solar wind. What’s more, getting rid of the EPIC imager would have more the mission more expensive, because the satellite would have to be re-balanced and wired. “The cheapest way to send it was to not change anything, so that kept the Earth science imager on it,” says Adam Szabo, a DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Which is how the rest of us got this awesome GIF of the moon passing in front of the Earth. And DSCOVR will keep beaming those amazing images back as long as it’s up there. “We can build up during the day an entire map of the whole Earth,” says Szabo. These pictures happen once every 1.8 hours, with ten different wavelength bands. Three of these are in red, blue, and green—which NASA and NOAA combine to make full color pics. The rest are tuned to wavelengths that pick out things like vegetation, cloud height, ozone, and aerosols—like Saharan Desert dust or smoke from the forest fires north of San Francisco. And those images will always be perfectly lit: DSCOVR always sees Earth’s sunny side because it’s a million miles away, locked in Lagrange point one. At this location, the gravitational forces between Sun and Earth (or any two orbital bodies, really) is stable, and a small enough object can just hang out. http://www.wired.com/2015/08/satellite-took-incredible-photo-almost-didnt-leave-earth/ /s .........So it actually was an EPIC photo................. Cheers...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggendrop Veteran Posted October 20, 2015 Veteran Share Posted October 20, 2015 NASA to post new ‘blue marble’ pictures every day Your daily dose of planet Earth is now just a click away, thanks to a new NASA website hosting photos looking back at the world from a small satellite stationed almost a million miles away, realizing a dream of former Vice President Al Gore nearly two decades ago. The Earth views are not the primary purpose of the $340 million Deep Space Climate Observatory, but the imagery will be piped to the devices of anyone who wants to see what their home planet looks like every day, surely making the photos the most publicly accessible part of the mission. The result of a space mission first proposed by Al Gore in 1998, DSCOVR blasted off in February aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket after years of starts and stops before finally winning final launch approvals under a partnership between NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force. Its main objective is to track the solar wind streaming toward Earth from the sun, giving warning of incoming solar storms that could disrupt air travel, electrical grids, communications and satellite operations. But the spacecraft also has a camera looking back at Earth, and a NASA website went live Monday showing the latest views from DSCOVR. DSCOVR reached its operating post at the L1 Lagrange point between Earth and the sun in June. The position gives the spacecraft uninterrupted views of the sunlit side of Earth and a place embedded in the stream of particles making up the supersonic solar wind flowing from the sun. http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/10/19/nasa-to-post-new-blue-marble-pictures-every-day/ Full Disk Earth from EPIC, October 17, 2015video is 0:16 min DSCOVR/EPIC camera link...NASAhttp://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggendrop Veteran Posted March 14, 2016 Veteran Share Posted March 14, 2016 Wow! Total Solar Eclipse Seen from 1 Million Miles Away (Video) Quote The moon's dark shadow travels across Earth's face in spectacular new views of Tuesday's (March 8) total solar eclipse captured by a satellite in deep space. The images, which have been combined into a gorgeous total solar eclipse video, were taken by the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite (DSCOVR), which sits at a gravitationally stable point in space 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) closer to the sun than Earth is. DSCOVR, a joint mission between NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was designed to provide an early space-weather warning system for the planet. [See photos of the 2016 total solar eclipse] The spacecraft monitors the stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun called the solar wind, and watches out for eruptions of solar plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can disrupt power grids, radio communications and GPS navigation if they hit Earth. According to DSCOVR project scientist Adam Szabo, the satellite's position upstream of Earth gives the planet 30 minutes' warning of approaching CMEs. Image of the total solar eclipse of March 8-9, 2016, captured by the NASA-NOAA Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft. Credit: NASA/DSCOVR-EPIC Team more at the link... http://www.space.com/32245-total-solar-eclipse-video-dscovr.html Satellite captures amazing view of total eclipse as seen from space video is 1:32 min. Unobscured Vision 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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