Amazing new photo of Earth. The Blue Marble 2012

This hi-rez photo of Earth taken by NASA is amazing and a must have imo.
It's a large file but well worth the download.
secure.flickr.com...

Suomi NPP, NASA’s newest Earth-watching satellite, has taken a high resolution image of Earth, one of the most beautiful such images ever created.

mashable.com...
Now I want one of the moon.

Yes amazing image of Earth - I want one - Oh! Wait we already got one on we live on it

We have higher resolutions of the moon.

LRO, Moon.

reply to post by Illustronic


Very true, I do remember seeing that.

It still doesn't feel the same for some reason, whats with the sharp edges

This was posted a few days ago

www.abovetopsecret.com...

And the poster said he wanted on of the moon as well...weird.

reply to post by dadfortruth1


I feel like I should be able to spin it, and look at the other side.
I tried, and I tried, but it just wouldn't spin.



P.S. I'm glad it was re-posted, since I had not seen it. thnx.

Earth? That's a photo of north america.

Seen this the other day, and was expecting something along the lines of common map-style projections; en.wikipedia.org...

Appears they couldn't be bothered to compile a photo of the opposite side too; So the question is, what are they hiding on the dark side of the Earth?

reply to post by dadfortruth1


There are no stars! Careful, that means it's faked and a conspiracy!

reply to post by InsideYourMind


NASA Visible Earth.

Visible Earth map projections. I use these for 3d projections, they offer a 1.5 GB file size.

Blue Marble is but one of the many different satellite imagery pockets of Visible Earth, you can find where you live on this site if you look.

reply to post by dadfortruth1


Sharp edges? You mean where the imagery swath's are merged? They do have the other side at the same resolution. The high resolution image passes usually are about 2 km wide, and a given length, I believe the other side is over 10,000 individual images pieced together. Its near impossible to have the same angle of light in every image.

A great picture. I would like to see a few from a different perspective/spin of the globe.

reply to post by InsideYourMind

Appears they couldn't be bothered to compile a photo of the opposite side too; So the question is, what are they hiding on the dark side of the Earth?

LOL and LOL some more.
Alien bases, of course.

reply to post by dadfortruth1


i already posted this a couple of days back

thanks for the thread anyway.

here's mine:
The Blue Marble

It doesn't look real to me. It looks like a render to my eyes.

Originally posted by RMFX1
It doesn't look real to me. It looks like a render to my eyes.

Its not a render, but a compilation, of swaths.

Below I set up at a scale of 4.356 miles per pixel image to illustrate the field of view of various distances from the surface of earth (scaled down to load here). The Earth image is the Blue Marble taken from geosynchronous orbit in 2002, 98% of the visible globe is able to be made at around a 20,000 mile orbit, but this new NASA compilation is from a satellite only 512 miles up, so, its field of view is nearly what you see in this 2012 image.

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.

2012 Blue Marble

NPP is a NASA satellite that has five instruments that provide critical insights into the dynamics of the entire Earth system including clouds, oceans, vegetation, ice and the atmosphere. NPP stands for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP). Roughly the size of a minibus, NPP orbits the Earth from pole to pole about 14 times a day, flying 512 miles (824 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

Suomi NPP info

There's a little bit more involved in assembling the images, but they are real.

Field of view.


(Outer vertical lines indicate field of view at 2 earth diameters distance, 15,853 miles away, 3 earth distances would be approximately the low end of a geosynchronous orbit, 23,779.2 miles away. One cannot theoretically see 50% of a sphere).

reply to post by dadfortruth1

I really wish you had linked to default sized one. 8000x8000 is not fun for those who don't have "supercomputer" at home with nearly unlimited amounts of ram. If i had not quickly stopped the load, then it would have crashed my browser which it nearly did.

delete

reply to post by dadfortruth1


I can see my house!

Wait...No, that's my neighbor.

Nice!

Peace

Wow, look at the coast of South Carolina/Georgia. The scalloped edge there is a new one on me. Florida looks elongated, perhaps due to perspective (or else no wonder they had to re-draw the lines at the Miami airport, lol) Lastly, I expected more green. Mostly the land looks like a parched desert. Almost Mars-like, but for the smears of green here and there.

This is fantastic, thank you for bringing it to my attention. Man, look at how "swirly" the Gulf of Mexico is... almost like a big oil slick.