From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth • Hacker News Board

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#101

Post by mark-r » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

jeffwass wrote: post #54

gojomo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the dark edge at the top-left of the moon was a shadow, but there was no solar eclipse in the time-frame reported for these pictures. So, even though a perfect alignment of DSCOVR (at L1), the moon, and Earth would mean a shadow and thus eclipse, the moon must be a little off that alignment on this pass, throwing its shadow into dark space, even though it looks very nearly aligned in the photos.

That dark edge is an artefact of the delay in capturing the three monochrome pictures through the different RGB filters. The article says : "Combining three images taken about 30 seconds apart as the moon moves produces a slight but noticeable camera artifact on the right side of the moon. Because the moon has moved in relation to the Earth between the time the first (red) and last (green) exposures were made, a thin…

It also says "A thin sliver of shadowed area of moon is visible on its right side." which is a better explanation. It's not a shadow on the Earth, it's the dark part of the moon.

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#102

Post by thearn4 » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

UserRights wrote: post #74

It is really cool how the NASA gives us a better understanding of the universe and our place in it by publishing all these nice pictures. However, I would like to have one easy accessible source for all the nice pictures that is daily updated and could be synchronized to a local school server e.g. with rsync. Is there one "ḧere-are-all-the-pics"-ftp server anywhere? It is quite time consuming to browse the hundreds o…

I'm a NASA engineer, and I think one of the problems that we recognize is just how much fragmentation there is between org units, projects, programs, and centers (each of which can be surprisingly autonomous). A single mission may have several "official" websites, depending on how the work is distributed across the agency.

Your wish for a single-accessible source for images would be great. For that to happen, we would need to have someone dedicated to curating it from so many possible sources, under mandate from HQ.

For general raw data (not necessarily images), an effort like that does exist, though it isn't yet supported by every program: https://data.nasa.gov/

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#103

Post by mxfh » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

kenbellows wrote: post #92

Honest question: Why don't the clouds seen on Earth show any activity or movement over the course of this time lapse?

There definitely is some movement:

Look at the fine features of the northern arm of the vortex in the South, they change quite a bit. Also, there are some clouds growing just east of the Gulf of California.

[EDIT] As it's arguably hard to spot with the low frame rate and movement I uploaded a stabilized and sped up version. It's centered on a cloud patch in the Pacific. You can now clearly see a cloud west of it disappear as well as a lot of movement in that jet stream(?) next to it.

http://i.imgur.com/Sg28xqu.gifv (legacy GIF 8MB: http://i.imgur.com/Sg28xqu.gif)

Closeup: http://i.imgur.com/wYfbnoU.gifv

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#104

Post by BinaryIdiot » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:46 PM UTC

ised wrote: post #99

UserRights wrote: post #74

It is really cool how the NASA gives us a better understanding of the universe and our place in it by publishing all these nice pictures. However, I would like to have one easy accessible source for all the nice pictures that is daily updated and could be synchronized to a local school server e.g. with rsync. Is there one "ḧere-are-all-the-pics"-ftp server anywhere? It is quite time consuming to browse the hundreds o…

The image, without the Javascript: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/dsc... Interesting note (from NASA?) to visitors embedded in the page: (function($) { $.reject({ display: ["msie", "firefox", "safari", "opera", "chrome", "gcf"], reject: { msie5: true, msie6: true, msie7: true, msie8: true, msie9: true, firefox2: true, firefox3: true, firefox4: true, firefox5: true, firefox6: true, firefox7:…

Fyi this is almost verbatim from what I've seen on several other sites. I'm assuming they just grabbed a browser identifying script from somewhere.

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#105

Post by kjs3 » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

bdavisx wrote: post #75

lcswi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't consider all comments to be honest, there are tons of bored trolls.

But also don't underestimate the stupidity, ignorance and/or anti-intellectualism of the general American (as well as other countries) population. Remember that 1/3 of Americans do not believe in evolution...

Why do you automatically think all or even most Twitter comments are from Americans?

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#106

Post by kjs3 » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

lqdc13 wrote: post #25

mnw21cam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the moon? Yes. You mean like meteosat? No. A 4 metre wide object is going to be such a small proportion of the size of a single pixel that it will be completely invisible.

Does anyone know why they decided to go with just a 4 megapixel camera? I guess they could settle for taking more narrow images and recombining later but it seems better to take one image and crop if they are just interested in small parts. Plus you have the option for digital zoom.

It can take a decade to build a satellite. And you have to fix the design before you build it. And you don't usually fly the absolute latest toy; you fly something that's proven reliable. So by the time it's on station, a satellite might be flying 10-20 year old tech.

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#107

Post by happyscrappy » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

Thiz wrote: post #98

Take an orange and a lemon and separate them two yards away. That's how they'd look from space.

I always heard a basketball and a tennis ball 24ft apart.

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#108

Post by hybridtupel » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:02 PM UTC

The only thing I could think about was Iron Sky busted :D

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#109

Post by ams6110 » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

A lot of cool stuff on that site but annoying that they hijack the "back" button.

Re: From a million miles away, NASA camera shows moon crossing face of Earth

#110

Post by SCAQTony » Thu, Aug 06, 2015, 3:20 PM UTC

UserRights wrote: post #74

It is really cool how the NASA gives us a better understanding of the universe and our place in it by publishing all these nice pictures. However, I would like to have one easy accessible source for all the nice pictures that is daily updated and could be synchronized to a local school server e.g. with rsync. Is there one "ḧere-are-all-the-pics"-ftp server anywhere? It is quite time consuming to browse the hundreds o…

I agree. Presentation is everything and images from the Voyager, Cassini, Hubble, the Mars landers, New Horizons, have done so much to inspire writers, artists, and has gotten kids interested in Science.

A repository of images would be amazing and provide a terrific return on investment intellectually, artistically, and even monetarily if a small fee was charged to maintain it.