Out of the blue and into the black the night is nowhere near as dark as most of us think.
Blue marble night lights.
The blue marble is an incredibly detailed true color depiction of the earth and is shown on the daylight side of the earth in this dataset.
Black marble uses imagery from nasa s suomi satellite.
This dataset shows the earth with daytime and nighttime views of the earth to demonstrate how only half of the earth is illumintated at one time.
In fact the earth is never really dark.
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.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
Here you can browse their maximum resolution of four pixels per km as well as a slightly coarser night lights map enhanced by town names and national borders.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
I like to surf around night light designs lights because there are over 1 000 different screen pictures.
Blue marble was initially created by nasa s goddard space flight center the night lights by noaa s national geophysical data center.
The black marble data provide resolution up to 500m giving a global perspective at night.
More info on the features of this site.
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.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
Therefore nasa introduced black marble in 2012 which complements its blue marble release of data that has become very popular with scientists and the public.