Black marble: The totality of human civilization as seen from outer space
Admire the most detailed images of the Earth at night, as seen by NASA’s Finland NPP satellite. The miracle of human civilization as a whole – everything you know, everything you love, every person who has ever lived – is captured in one vulnerable image of black marble.
The Black Marble 2012 image was captured by Finland, a NASA / NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) weather satellite that was launched last year to get a better picture of the Earth’s atmosphere. Finland it has a polar orbit at an altitude of 824 km (512 miles) – the result is about 14 orbits of the earth every day, and Finland crosses any point in the country at 1.30 and 13.30 every day.
There are a lot of imaging equipment in Finland, but in this case Black Marble has been photographed with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). VIIRS is sensitive to 22 different radiation bands, allowing it to capture as much information as possible about the conditions of the Earth’s atmosphere. The complete flat map of the Earth (below), which was then used to create Black Marble images, is a montage of 2.5 terabytes of images stored in more than 312 orbits in the day-night lane of VIIRS. If you wonder, these images of the earth at night are the best the world has ever seen.
These night shots are a continuation of Finland’s attacks of previous years, where it offered us The Blue Marble 2012 – the most detailed day view of the globe and a tribute to the original Blue Marble photos taken by the Apollo 17 crew. they returned from the Moon.
Finally, a few high-resolution shots of Finland, from various worldly places of interest. For some reason, they are black and white, which makes me believe that the Black Marble images above are distorted by a small blue moonlight.
For more pictures, hit NASA, or NASA’s Flickr account.