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On February 3rd for some reason NASA tuned up DSCOVR to send images of the Earth every 20min instead of the regular 2 hours interval. Last time they did this was for the great USA solar eclipse, in order to catch the most frames out of the event. But this time I don't see what event would have motivated that. Any idea ?

As a side note I'm interested in DSCOVR stuff because I developed an app called Blueturn that interpolates EPIC images to create an interactive video, actually the first and only permanent video of the Whole Earth. More generally, the app gives access to a 3D virtual world of the Earth's neighborhood, so you can even look at the Lissajous path if you zoom out. Regarding my question, higher rates improve the result in Blueturn, specially when tweaking a geostationary animation. You can check also in the app with this direct link:

http://app.blueturn.earth/?date=2018-02-03_02-20-53

Or check directly the video via this tweet link: https://twitter.com/BlueturnEarth/status/961557440360837120

Mic
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  • That is a weird effect. How does DSCOVR see the milky way with such short exposures? How does it see a darkened, night time view of Earth from the Sun-Earth L1 region, where the Earth should appear almost completely sunlit? – uhoh Feb 08 '18 at 13:16
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    Clarification: this geostanionary view is CG, where I just project DSCOVR/EPIC images as textures on a 3D globe. – Mic Feb 10 '18 at 06:35
  • Thanks for the clarification, it looks great btw! Since occasionally there are questions here related to hoaxes, moon-landing deniers, alien spaceship sighting types of things, it's just good to distinguish between primary images, and generated images. (see for example Which Apollo “mystery” was said to be finally solved by a better rendering engine?) – uhoh Feb 10 '18 at 07:02
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    Sure. The notion of primary images is always problematic, and requires some definition. Any digital video is by essence fake. It's a matter of tuning of the image processing, which can be per-pixel or via 3D manipulation. Even NASA's DSCOVR EPIC pictures underwent a contrast color correction, and the Earth would be much brighter if seen from a naked eye (that's why astronauts have crazy filters in their helmet).

    For example in my app, the default view is DSCOVR's view, exactly identical to EPIC images if not interpolating. But try the "Bright" slider regarding my remark about contrast.

     – Mic Feb 11 '18 at 07:24

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