Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP
Behold one of the more detailed images of the Earth yet created.
This
Blue Marble Earth montage shown above --
created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the new
Suomi NPP satellite -- shows many stunning details of our home planet.
The
Suomi NPP satellite was
launched last October and renamed last week after
Verner Suomi, commonly deemed the father of
satellite meteorology.
The composite was created from the data collected during four orbits of the robotic satellite taken earlier this month and
digitally projected onto the globe.
Many features of
North America and the
Western Hemisphere are particularly visible on a
high resolution version of the image.
Previously, several other
Blue Marble Earth images have been created, some at
even higher resolution.