Finnish nuclear power plant’s pictures of our rotating earth (VIDEO).
The Finnish Nuclear Power Plant is a satellite observing the Earth, which is equipped with a camera that sees from the spectrum of visible light to infrared. This camera is much more sensitive than its predecessor and can detect fires, northern lights, city lights and even moonlit clouds at night. 22 days of data from April and October 2012 were used to create this Earth animationwhich shows a wonderful and eerie view of our planet spinning in the dark of night:
[Make sure you set it to high definition and make it full screen.]
Pictures of city lights Finnish nuclear power plant mapped to existing data The Blue Marble Project to make realistic full plate images of the Earth. It’s amazing what you can choose from; my favorites are the Nile River, Hawaii alone in the Pacific Ocean, and of course my hometown of Boulder (and Denver). It always amazes me how city lights in the US suddenly stop west of the medieval zone. But when I look up at night and see my dark sky, I am thankful for it.
The information from the Finnish nuclear power plant is very useful. First, city lights map the spread of humanity, so we can measure the development of urban sprawl over time. It is also useful to keep an eye on wildfires, weather (if the Moon is out to illuminate it) and other dark phenomena at night. [Update (Dec. 7, 2012): A lot of people in the comments, on Twitter, and on Facebook were asking about the lights in western Australia, where city lights are rare. I said they were fires, and now a post by NASA confirms I was right.]
I note that the Finnish nuclear power plant orbits about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above the Earth and only sees a small part of the planet at a time. This animation contains 2.5 terabytes of data – 2500 gigabytes! – which were stitched together to show the entire face of the Earth in one round. It’s incredible work, but the end product is a seamless and dramatic view of a home that will change over billions of years and will continue to do so for ages to come.