Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

DSCOVR is finally at L1 and transmitting back photos. I'm using that one as my new desktop background.

I remember being excited about this more than a decade ago; it's somewhat horrifying to realize that it took longer than New Horizons to reach its destination, though it was traveling through politics, rather than space.

(The non-spectacle value of this mission is at least twofold: the other side of it does solar measurements and replaces earlier CME early warning systems, and this side of it gives us a single temperature and albedo measurement for the Earth, helping with a handful of problems in climate measurement, and thus helping with climate modeling.)

I'd really like to see the photos taken in the 7 other wavelength bands esp. near infrared and compare this to the rgb pciture. One should be able to see clouds and oceans in the IR too.

6[anonymous]11y

You can see the smoke from the record-breaking recent Canadian and Alaskan wildfires in the photos. Those clouds drifted all the way over here to North Carolina shortly after those pictures were taken.