I'm not sure why the night-time feed isn't at least picking up lights from cities or oil refinery burns. (Granted, right now it's off the southern coast of Australia...)
In some of the images I could see some lens info. At least one camera uses a Dicomar lens and the camera used might be[1]. NASA's site[2] on the project doesn't say which exact camera is used. Anyone know more about the camera setup?
From a NASA project presentation[0], there's a Panasonic AGHMC150, a Toshiba IK-HR1s, a Hitachi HV-HD30, and a Sony FCB-EH4300 in the HDEV. Video routing is done by a Extron SW4 3G HD-SDI and encoded by a Visionary Solutions AVN443.
We have to understand that is a live streaming from 230 miles up in the sky. It might not work 100% of the time, but if you're patience enough, you can enjoy images like the one I just saw:
But it's consistent with your previous comment, in that it only defines HDTV, not "High Definition" as a generic term.
But given that HDTV is what caused "HD" to enter the vernacular, you'd have to be pretty dense to call something HD Video when it doesn't meet the HDTV standard. That would be like burning an .avi to a CD-R, and calling it a Digital Video Disc because it's a disc with digital video on it.
Interestingly, the PDF above suggests that you could have a 960x720 4:3 display that shows letterboxed 16:9 at 540p, and still call it an "HDTV".
I don't know why you would want to use javascript... have a look at this cinder space simulator, it supports oculus and should be easy to convert the cinder app to a screensaver - not to sure about a moving desktop background. http://roberthodgin.com/oculus-rift-gravity/
Has it always been a black screen? Could just be a fake test from someone like Urthecast to see what kind of demand a live stream would generate on launch
My reading of their comment is that there just isn't any light since it's on the night-side of the Earth, and the Sun isn't providing any light over there. If it were over a part of the planet with light pollution, that's probably not strong enough to break through the atmosphere.
Artificial lighting can be seen from space (the only man made thing that can be seen from space), but I guess the camera isn't good enough to pick it up.
Well, this really depends on what you mean by 'see' (and I suppose what you mean by 'space' as well, but let's just assume the ISS is the benchmark). Pictures like that, afaik, are taken with camera lenses that look roughly like [1]. You definitely can't make out city blocks with just your eyes from the ISS.
I meant with the naked eye. With an appropriate telescope one can of course see a lot of detail (see Google Maps). And given how low the orbit of the ISS is I guess it's easier to see things from there than from an orbit where there isn't a rest of atmosphere that slows you down (yes, the ISS has to be regularly pushed by space farriers).
It is odd just how black the feed is, but here is a shot of the ISS crossing from daylight to shadow to illustrate that it is the real feed and not artificial.
