ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Multi- and Hyper-Spectral Imaging
This article is part of the Research TopicEarth Observations from the Deep Space: 10 Years of the DSCOVR MissionView all 17 articles
Full-Illuminated Jupiter Disk Albedo and Limb Darkening Observed by DSCOVR-EPIC from the Earth-Sun Lagrange-1 Orbit
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
- 2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States
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MulƟspectral images of Jupiter were obtained by the Earth PolychromaƟc Imaging Camera (EPIC) orbiƟng at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point L1 on 15 March 2016 and again on 5 June 2019 using a 30-cm Cassegrain telescope imaging on a 2048 x 2048 pixel detector with a field of view of 0.62 degrees. The images of Jupiter are obtained through 10 narrow bandpass filters (317.5 to 779.5 nm) that are radiometrically calibrated and are designed to have very liƩle out-of-band transmission. The EPIC instrument is carefully corrected for geometric stray light effects, pixel non-uniformity (flat fielding), and etaloning (680 -780 nm). The Jupiter images are contained in a small disk of 43 pixels diameter near the center of the detector. The resulƟng images, with a spaƟal resoluƟon of 4900 km, show clear evidence of limb darkening, the east-west bands, and red spot of Jupiter. The results are compared with previous measurements from Jupiter filter images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope HST, from a ground-based filter instrument at Tortugas Mountain operated by New Mexico State University, and a portable filter device PlanetCam at Calar Alto Observatory, Spain. EPIC esƟmates of whole disk albedo agree well with previous high spectral resoluƟon spectrometer results (European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile) in the visible and near-IR wavelengths but are lower in the five UV 318 to 388 nm narrow bandpass filter channels. A possible reason for the disagreement with the spectrometer esƟmated UV albedo is out-of-band stray light from the spectrometer graƟng. EPIC's observaƟons from L1 have beƩer spaƟal resoluƟon than ground-based filter measurements and should provide improved esƟmates of Jupiter's limb darkening. AbsorpƟon by methane is considered and the current mixing raƟo 2x10-3 is esƟmated to be insufficient to explain the decrease in albedo between 764 and 779.5 nm unless the reflecƟng cloud layer is at 2 atmospheres pressure.
Keywords: Jupiter, Limb-Darkening, Lagrange-1, DSCOVR-EPIC, Methane
Received: 14 Aug 2025; Accepted: 05 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Herman and Blank. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jay Herman
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