I don't have direct answers to the questions being asked here, but I do have a little information that might be useful to people. When they first launched the website, I sent this inquiry to the media contact:
I'm enjoying browsing the new DSCOVR EPIC website; it's a beautiful camera. I am wondering if there is a place where I can view a table or text file or something that contains basic metadata for the images (primarily a list of links to images with their timestamps). The reason I ask is because I'm interested in trying to make animations of Earth over time from a fixed longitude, but the way the website is set up, it's laborious to identify which days contain images taken at roughly the same times. Such a table would also allow people to invent different ways of displaying/searching the data.
EPIC Daily "Blue Marble" API
The API URL is:
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/api/images.phpThis gets you a list of the latest day's images & metadata.
OR
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/api/images.php?d...amp;w=X&e=YThe second form's optional parameters allow you to focus in to geographical regions that were in view (technically, longitudinal bounding points) on a given date.
For instance: Using North America's boundaries of east = -53.034, and west = -170.859 and choosing August 24, 2015, the URL would look like this:
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/api/images.php?d...9&e=-53.034The date parameter is unpadded(e.g. 2015-9-1, vs. 2015-09-01 for September 1, 2015), and optional. Leaving the date off will default to the latest image set.
Leaving out the coordinates gets you every image for whatever date is returned.
Adding either longitudinal parameter returns all images for the given date, for which the supplied longitude is in view of the camera.
The JSON data looks like this:
ImageData object:
{
"image": "epic_1b_20150826231708_00", // image name sans extension.
"caption": "About an image", // Will contain a caption
"coords": "{}", // Contains a JSON string representing a Coordinates object.
"date": "2015-08-26 23:17:08" // The date the capture sequence for the image was initiated
}
ImageData notes:
For the image field to be useful, it has to be added to a URL. Image URLs differ depending upon purpose.
Given an image name of "epic_1b_20150901205648_00" (taken Sept 1, 2015, with the camera aimed
at 3 typhoons in the pacific (my favorite)), we have:
For compressed JPG thumbnails, the path would be
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/thu...01205648_00.jpg For full-size, compressed JPG previews, the path would be
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/jpg...01205648_00.jpg For full-size original PNG images, the path would
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-archive/png...01205648_00.pngCoordinates object
{
"centroid_coordinates": { // Geographical coordinates that the satellite is looking at
"lat": 4.076132,
"lon": -169.648562
},
"dscovr_j2000_position": { // Position of the satellite in space
"x": -1439710.750000,
"y": 659227.437500,
"z": 113316.414062
},
"lunar_j2000_position": { // Position of the moon in space
"x": 153199.062500,
"y": -319797.531250,
"z": -104905.093750
},
"sun_j2000_position": { // Position of the sun in space
"x": -134918656.000000,
"y": 62555808.000000,
"z": 27119770.000000
},
"attitude_quaternions": { // Satellite attitude
"q0": 0.976360,
"q1": -0.212080,
"q2": -0.039540,
"q3": 0.013750
}
}