|
Blue Marble: The Best Images of the Earth To Date
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has recently uploaded a stunning series of high-resolution photos to its Flickr account. The series, called "Blue Marble," features satellite-based composite photographs taken from June to September 2001. According to NASA, the "Blue Marble" images are the "most detailed true-color images of the entire Earth to date."
Unlike single-frame images taken of Earth from above, the "Blue Marble" series is a "mosaic" of photographs. Land surface, deep oceans and seas, shallow coastlines, ice, and clouds were compiled and "stitched together" by scientists and visualizers to create a "seamless" portrait of our planet.
See the newest stunning, detailed "Blue Marble" images below, then compare them to the original "Blue Marble" photograph, taken by Apollo 17 in 1968.
Note: There are links below, if you want to see the photos in different sizes. 
Flickr Homepage, Blue Marble, Western Hemisphere
 Western, 500 x 500 (157 KB)
Western, 1024 x 1024 (496 KB)
Western, 2048 x 2048 (588 KB)
Flickr Homepage, Blue Marble, Eastern Hemisphere
Eastern, 500 x 500 (151 KB)
Eastern, 1024 x 1024 (468 KB)
Eastern, 2048 x 2048 (532 KB)
More info from NASA's Flickr page:
This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land surface map.
Robert  ...gratia autem Dei, sum id quod sum
|
Home - New Freeware 
Free Software 
Editor Awards
100 TOP User Rated
100 TOP Downloads
100 Most Viewed
Advanced Search 
Forum (BB)
Fun Pictures 
Submit Software
Contacts
About Nonags
Link To Nonags
Like us in Facebook
RSS 
My Free Website
Please Login to Reply:
