Retrieve and Save EPIC Natural Color Earth Images — get_epic_earth

Queries NASA's EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) API to retrieve metadata and images of Earth taken on a specified date. Images can optionally be saved to a folder on the user's Desktop.

Usage

get_epic_earth_images(date = NULL, api_key = "DEMO_KEY", folder_name = NULL)

Arguments

date: Character or NULL. The Earth date in "YYYY-MM-DD" format to retrieve images from. If NULL, today's date is used. Note that today's images may not yet be available.
api_key: Character. NASA API key. Defaults to "DEMO_KEY", but a personal API key is recommended.
folder_name: Character or NULL. If provided, images will be saved in a folder with this name on the user's Desktop. If NULL, images are only displayed and not saved.

Value

A data frame containing metadata for the retrieved EPIC images, including image names, dates, and captions.

Details

The function builds the download URLs based on NASA's EPIC archive structure, which organizes images into year/month/day subfolders. Only natural color images are retrieved. Images are displayed using the magick package and can be optionally saved as PNG files.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Retrieve and view EPIC images from April 1, 2024
epic_data <- get_epic_earth_images(date = "2024-04-01", api_key = "your_actual_api_key")

# Retrieve and save EPIC images to Desktop/EPIC_Images
epic_data_saved <- get_epic_earth_images(
  date = "2024-04-01",
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY",
  folder_name = "EPIC_Images"
)
} # }