It is a set of cloud free image mosaics from nasa s blue marble.
Blue marble basemap imagery courtesy nasa.
This spectacular blue marble image is the most detailed true color image of the entire earth to date.
The images show how the surface would look to a human in space if our world had no clouds and no atmosphere.
To learn more about the development of nasa s imagery of the earth as a whole read the history of the blue marble.
Using a collection of satellite based observations scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface oceans sea ice and clouds into a seamless true color mosaic of every square kilometer 386 square mile of our planet.
In sharing these blue marble images nasa hopes the public will join with the agency in its continuing exploration of our world from the unique perspective of space.
Published december 6 2012.
Nasa s terra satellite collected these images.
Night lights 2012 the black marble.
Ok so what is this basemap made of.
Fewer people know that nasa also studies earth.
Using data from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer modis aboard nasa s terra satellite scientists and data visualizers stitched together a full year s worth of monthly observations of the land surface coastal oceans sea ice and clouds into.
A hallmark of a firefly map is the dark desaturated imagery basemap.
Schmitt lunar module pilot traveling toward the moon.
The next generation blue marble everyone knows that nasa studies space.
The npp satellite was renamed suomi npp on january 24 2012 to honor the late verner e.
There is one blue marble image for each month of the year 2004.
A blue marble image of the earth taken from the viirs instrument aboard nasa s most recently launched earth observing satellite suomi npp.
This composite image uses a number of swaths of the earth s surface taken on january 4 2012.
Clicking near the edge of the picture moves the focus into the respective direction clicking on its center zooms in and back out thus switching between 4 and 0 5 gigapixel.
Next generation images show earth in true color.
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.
The shown section is 720 600 by default but can be resized using the and buttons at the top.
Display of a section of the 86400 43200 blue marble pictures that nasa derived from imagery taken in 2004.
The resolution holds up to about 1 2 000 000 so it s great for global and regional maps.
View of the earth as seen by the apollo 17 crew astronaut eugene a.
This translunar coast photograph extends from the mediterranean sea area to the antarctica south polar ice cap.
And scientist astronaut harrison h.