Deep Space Observations of Terrestrial Glitter

Deep space climate observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft drifts about the Lagrangian point ≈1.4–1.6 × 106 km from Earth, where its Earth polychromatic imaging camera (EPIC) observes sun-lit face of every 1 to 2 hours. At any instance, there is a preferred (specular) spot on globe, glint may be observed by EPIC. While monitoring reflectance at these spots (terrestrial glitter), we observe occasional intense glints originating neither ocean surface nor cloud ice and argue that mountain lakes high in Andes are among causes. We also examine time-averaged find it exceeding neighbors, with excess monotonically increasing separation distance. This specular found all channels more pronounced latest best-calibrated version EPIC data, thus opening possibility testing geometric calibration distant glitter.