Cancel

gear Push settings

bars

homehome Home chatchat Notifications


The Blue Marble: the most stunning, high-res photo of the Earth

A while ago NASA launched its next generation weather satellite, the Suomi NPP satellite, into low-orbit, on a mission to  collect critical data set to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change. Besides, valuable scientific measurements, the NPP satellite also provides some incredible glimpses of our planet in great detail. We showed you […]

Tibi Puiu
January 26, 2012 @ 9:24 am

share Share

A while ago NASA launched its next generation weather satellite, the Suomi NPP satellite, into low-orbit, on a mission to  collect critical data set to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change. Besides, valuable scientific measurements, the NPP satellite also provides some incredible glimpses of our planet in great detail. We showed you one of the first pictures captured by the satellite late last year, a gorgeous view by all meas, but only an appetizer compared to this latest rendition of the great blue planet.

earth blue marble high res photo

The 64-megapixel image was captured by the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (or NPP) satellite. Just recently the NPP was renamed Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi, recognized as the father of satellite meteorology.

The blue marble photo is actually a composition of several superimposed images, each taken from separate swaths of the Earth’s surface from January 4, 2012. The Suomi NPP now orbits Earth about 14 times each day and observes nearly the entire surface.

Check out the 8000×8000 and have some fun zooming in through the North American continent, or download smaller versions for your tablet or smartphone.

NASA

share Share

A Massive Particle Blasted Through Earth and Scientists Think It Might Be The First Detection of Dark Matter

A deep-sea telescope may have just caught dark matter in action for the first time.

Scientists Used Lasers To Finally Explain How Tiny Dunes Form -- And This Might Hold Clues to Other Worlds

Decoding how sand grains move and accumulate on Earth can also help scientists understand dune formation on Mars.

Astronomers Claim the Big Bang May Have Taken Place Inside a Black Hole

Was the “Big Bang” a cosmic rebound? New study suggests the Universe may have started inside a giant black hole.

Astronomers Just Found the Most Powerful Cosmic Event Since the Big Bang. It's At Least 25 Times Stronger Than Any Supernova

The rare blasts outshine supernovae and reshape how we study black holes.

Terraforming Mars Might Actually Work and Scientists Now Have a Plan to Try It

Can we build an ecosystem on Mars — and should we?

New Simulations Suggest the Milky Way May Never Smash Into Andromeda

A new study questions previous Milky Way - Andromeda galaxy collision assumptions.

China Is Building The First AI Supercomputer in Space

China wants to turn space satellites into a giant cloud server.

China and Russia Plan to Build a Nuclear Power Plant on the Moon by 2035 Leaving the US Behind

A new kind of space race unfolds on the moon's south pole.

A Decade After The Martian, Hollywood’s Mars Timeline Is Falling Apart

NASA hasn’t landed humans on Mars yet. But thanks to robotic missions, scientists now know more about the planet’s surface than they did when the movie was released.

This Newly Discovered Mini Planet Is Orbiting So Far It Takes 25,000 Years to Circle the Sun

A 700-kilometer-wide object orbits farther than almost anything we've ever seen.