The full earth views, such as the view in this poster, are actually composites of much smaller and higher-resolution views. The combination of data sets immediately led the result to be referred to as the "Black Marble". Once collected, the light data was then superimposed and combined with existing NASA Blue-Marble imagery, which is world-wide coverage of daytime satellite views of the planet. Man-made cities are the most prominent source of light from the planet, but the sensors can also pick up reflected moonlight, auroras, wildfires, and even fires from oil and gas extraction sites. Travelling a staggering 512 miles (824 km) above the surface of the earth, the Suomi Satellite made a total of 312 orbits over a total period of 22 days, capturing nighttime data of every corner of the planet.ĭuring those orbits, the data was collected with ultra-sensitive sensors that can pick up light sources emitted from the Earth's surface. The satellite imagery released was based on data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite during the year of 2012, both in April and October. Much of that changed in late 2012 when NASA released its nighttime satellite views of earth. While we've all seen satellite imagery taken during daylight in mapping applications and software, we often forget about how the earth looks in hours of darkness.
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