Night lights 2012 the black marble published december 6 2012 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.
Blue marble night lights.
Blue marble was initially created by nasa s goddard space flight center the night lights by noaa s national geophysical data center.
Black marble uses imagery from nasa s suomi satellite.
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.
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.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
Night lights imagery by noaa s earth observation group privacy policy.
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.
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.
I like to surf around night light designs lights because there are over 1 000 different screen pictures.
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.
Out of the blue and into the black the night is nowhere near as dark as most of us think.
More info on the features of this site.
The black marble data provide resolution up to 500m giving a global perspective at night.
In fact the earth is never really dark.