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DSCOVR EPIC Level 1B Version 3

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) is a 10-channel spectro-radiometer (317 – 780 nm) onboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) DSCOVR spacecraft located at the Earth-Sun Lagrange-1 (L-1) point giving EPIC a unique angular perspective that is used in science applications to measure ozone, aerosols, cloud reflectivity, cloud height, vegetation properties, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation estimates at Earth's surface. EPIC provides ten narrow-band spectral images of the entire sunlit face of the Earth using a 2048x2048 pixel Charge Coupled Device (CCD) detector coupled to a 30-cm aperture Cassegrain telescope. EPIC collects radiance data from the Earth and other sources through the Camera/Telescope Assembly. EPIC has a field of view (FOV) of 0.62 degrees, sufficient to image the entire Earth. Because of DSCOVR's tilted (Lissajous) orbit about the L‐1 point, the apparent angular size of the Earth varies from 0.45 to 0.53 degrees within its 6-month orbital period. Depending on the season, a complete set of per-band images is taken every 60 to 100 minutes.Accompanying instrument metadata and a series of calibrations and corrections are applied to convert the images to Level 1A format properly. The significant corrections are for flat‐fielding and stray light. Flat-fielding is based on measurements with a uniform light source to measure the differences in sensitivity for each of the 4 million pixels. The resulting correction map is applied to the estimated counts from the CCD. Stray light was measured in the laboratory using a series of small-diameter light sources entering the telescope and imaged on the CCD. A similar set of measurements has been performed on orbit using the moon. The illumination of pixels outside the primary diameter of the light source was measured to produce a detailed matrix map of the entire stray light function, and the resulting stray light correction was applied to every image. Other corrections are also used based on laboratory measurements. For wavelengths longer than 550 nm, there are back-to-front interference effects in the partially transparent CCD (etaloning) that must also be removed from measured radiance.The Level 1B products contain calibrated and geolocated EPIC images with ancillary metadata. These data products are in HDF5 format.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/EPIC/DSCOVR/L1B.003
Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id d238cdca-118a-477a-abc7-48e0bb4f67cc
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/DSCOVR
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"Boundary":{"Points":{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":90,"Longitude":180},{"Latitude":90,"Longitude":-180},{"Latitude":-90,"Longitude":-180}}}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 5100eff67d815069eed3c679667acf233056762551cb6ec8fa3970b7f47034cf
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2015-06-13/2015-06-13

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