CUPOLA / LEARN
Understand what you're seeing.
CUPOLA is not only a beautiful camera. It is an invitation to understand the boundaries between observed data, mathematical prediction and artistic presentation.
FIELD NOTE 01
What does near-live Earth imagery mean?
A satellite sensor captures data at a time and location, then an agency processes and publishes it. Different layers have different latency and footprints.
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How does an orbital estimate work?
CUPOLA uses element sets with SGP4 to calculate predicted orbital positions. The resulting path is not a spacecraft GPS feed and does not itself establish ground visibility.
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Why does Earth have a day-night boundary?
The solar terminator follows the Sun-Earth geometry. We calculate the illumination state separately from what a particular satellite can physically image.
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How do night-light images differ?
Radiance imagery may be a historical mosaic or a recent gap-filled composite. Clouds, stray light and sensor conditions limit interpretation of individual pixels.
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