International Space Station HD Livestream | Hacker News Reader

International Space Station HD Livestream

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155 pointshownottowrite47 comments

If you see a blank screen it's night. You can see the current location and day/night status here: http://iss.astroviewer.net/

Umm any decent camera would pick up at least something, black means they turn off the feed

+ like someone else said 480p is not hd

the stream is gray when they turn off the feed, black is night.

I'm just happy about it because SPACE.

Or from : http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/

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...)

Earth is big, most of it is ocean, most of the rest is uninhabited.

Here are some snapshots I made (selected images from letting the stream run for few hours, from about 4 orbits):

http://imgur.com/a/99fS8

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?

[1]http://business.panasonic.co.uk/professional-camera/avcam/ag... [2]http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experimen...

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.

[0] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2011001...

Thank you, good find!

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:

http://cl.ly/image/2D0G0m0P2R3D

A (very) quick and dirty hack to see ISS Tracker (www.isstracker.com) and the video side by side: http://ri.io/iss.html

There are 18239 people currently watching a black screen. Goodnight moon.

Pretty phenomenal when you think about the speed it's going at... I just watched it cross the Atlantic ocean and it's nearly over Europe now...

480p is not HD (is it?) (edit: this is still awesome, was just expecting 720 or 1080)

there is no standardized definition of HD. HDTV is 720 or 1080, but HD is simply a generic term meaning better than standard definition.

The only exception I've ever seen to the "HD >= 720 lines" rule is that of ignorant video uploaders.

do you have any official sources? I would love to update the related wikipedia page but can't exactly cite a hacker news comment.

The best I can find is this:

http://www.ce.org/CorporateSite/media/Standards-Media/DTV_De...

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".

480i is SD, technically (in marketing-speak) anything better than that is HD. In this case 480p is...

From my understanding the cameras are HD, maybe they don't have the bandwidth to push HD video streams down from the ISS.

480p is DVD quality

The PDF linked earlier mentions 720p, so it may only be the ustream that is limited to 480. source: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2011001...

I would love to use this as a desktop background :)

I'm thinking D3.js powered simulator.

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/

NASA's page that combines the stream with an overview of where the ISS is over the earth at any given time: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/

(Hint: if it is over an area of daylight you're more likely to see video. Use the white line to see where it will be in 1.5 hours.)

I have been waiting for UrtheCast (http://www.urthecast.com/) to start live streaming the camera they had the Russians mount on the ISS awhile back.

Is this the same camera?

Third time I've been linked to this. Third time it doesn't seem to be working. No luck for me, it seems.

It's back up now.

I have a feeling that my work day is going to revolve around watching this (no pun intended).

Do we know approximately what the delay is?

How much does that vacation cost?

eyeporn

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

it clearly states:

"Black Image = International Space Station (ISS) is on the night side of the Earth. "

Is something explicitly setting it to black, or is total blackness what the camera is capturing?

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.

Actually that is incorrect. You can see the Great Pyramids from space.

Link: http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012...

Supporting Article: http://www.universetoday.com/93398/can-you-see-the-pyramids-...

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.

[1] http://media.the-digital-picture.com/Images/Other/Canon-EF-8...

NASA actually has a very long history of using Nikon equipment.

Here are a couple references to (still) photography from the ISS:

http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/07/nikon-gear-at-the-iss.aspx...

http://nikonrumors.com/2013/11/12/low-light-astrophotography...

http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/22/astronaut-chris-hadfield-h...

http://nikonrumors.com/2012/04/08/nikon-in-space-new-nightpo...

And to study quantum entanglement: http://nikonrumors.com/2013/04/09/400mm-nikon-lens-to-be-mod...

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).

Right - if the exposure is fixed so that fully lit side is normally exposed, I wouldn't be surprised if it was totally black on the other side.

Probably helps the video compression for the night side, too!

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.

http://i.imgur.com/tgAqmQU.png

THIS IS AMAZING

https://twitter.com/TheKaranGoel/status/463920252615548928/p...

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