Published december 6 2012.
Blue marble night 2012.
The data was acquired over nine days in april 2012 and 13 days in october 2012.
A blue marble image of the earth taken from the viirs instrument aboard nasa s most recently launched earth observing satellite suomi npp.
It was taken by the crew of the apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the moon and is one of the most reproduced images in history.
Map of 2012 beautified using combined data from many satellite pictures taken in april and october 2012 nasa published a beautified map in which the night lights were shown in yellow on a blue ified version of the day time blue marble picture.
The blue marble is an image of earth taken on december 7 1972 from a distance of about 29 000 kilometers 18 000 miles from the planet s surface.
To view many more still images and maps of night lights visit our new feature page.
This animated globe shows the city lights of the world as they appeared to the new suomi npp satellite which has at least 10 times better light resolving power than previous night viewing satellites.
To view the video of the night lights click on the link below the image or visit our youtube page.
This new data was then mapped over existing blue marble imagery of earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.
It mainly shows the earth from the mediterranean sea to antarctica.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
Out of the blue and into the black the night is nowhere near as dark as most of us think.
This composite image uses a number of swaths of the earth s surface taken on january 4 2012.
This animated globe shows the city lights of the world as they appeared to the new suomi npp satellite which has at least 10 times better light resolving power than previous night viewing satellites.
This new data was then mapped over existing blue marble imagery to provide a realistic view of the planet.
It twinkles with lights from humans and nature.
The data was acquired over nine days in april 2012 and thirteen days in october 2012.
It shows even faint lights rather brightly and is thus well suited to spot even villages.
Published december 6 2012.
Night lights 2012 the black marble.
Earth at night 2012.
In fact the earth is never really dark.
This new data was then mapped over existing modis blue marble imagery to provide a realistic view of the planet.
Night lights 2012 the black marble.
It took the satellite 312 orbits and 2 5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of earth s land surface and islands.
