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Vaniver comments on Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 20 July 2015 06:55AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 21 July 2015 05:29:00PM 7 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: CellBioGuy 22 July 2015 01:34:50AM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 July 2015 08:17:06PM 2 points [-]

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.