New NASA images show the Earth's electric light show.
29/12/2012.
NASA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
"The night is nowhere as dark as we might think." A view of the Earth's lights at night, acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, 12/2012.
Northern Africa. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory.
Click above to see larger image - Europe. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory
Caribbean islands and the northern coast of South America. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory.
Click above to see larger image - New Jersey, Manhattan and Cape Cod. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory.
Australia. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory.
Click above to see larger image - Japan. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory
The Nile and its delta. Suomi NPP Satellite / NASA Earth Observatory.
Click above to see larger image - A view of the Earth's lights at night, acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. NASA.
That's the word from Mitch Goldberg, program scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Joint Polar Satellite System. Together with NASA, scientists have unveiled a new composite, cloud-free image of our planet at night.
The imagery, which was posted to NASA's website on Wednesday (05/12/2012), shows the planet bathed in cool blue, with city lights radiating out in sinewy yellow splotches.
The pictures that make up the massive composite image were taken over nine days in April and 13 days in October of this year, by an instrument on a satellite that's "sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal glow produced by Earth's atmosphere and the light from a single ship in the sea," NASA states. The satellite collected 2.5 terabytes of data in 312 orbits of the planet "to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands."
We cut a few smaller images from the huge global map. But if you want to download and explore the original image yourself, you can. There's even a gargantuan, 54000 x 27000-pixel image, guaranteed to crash any browser, for those who dare.
