NASA Blue Marble 2007 West
RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 9, 2007
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli
A day’s clouds. The shape and texture of the land. The living ocean. City lights as a beacon of human presence across the globe. This amazingly beautiful view of Earth from space is a fusion of science and art, a showcase for the remote-sensing technology that makes such views possible, and a testament to the passion and creativity of the scientists who devote their careers to understanding how land, ocean, and atmosphere—even life itself—interact to generate Earth’s unique (as far as we know!) life-sustaining environment.
Drawing on data from multiple satellite missions (not all collected at the same time), a team of NASA scientists and graphic artists created layers of global data for everything from the land surface, to polar sea ice, to the light reflected by the chlorophyll in the billions of microscopic plants that grow in the ocean. They wrapped these layers around a globe, set it against a black background, and simulated the hazy edge of the Earth’s atmosphere (the limb) that appears in astronaut photography of the Earth.
The land surface layer is based on photo-like surface reflectance observations (reflected sunlight) measured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite in July 2004. The sea ice layer near the poles comes from Terra MODIS observations of daytime sea ice observed between August 28 and September 6, 2001. The ocean layer is a composite. In shallow water areas, the layer shows surface reflectances observed by Terra MODIS in July 2004. In the open ocean, the photo-like layer is overlaid with observations of the average ocean chlorophyll content for 2004. NASA’s Aqua MODIS collected the chlorophyll data. The cloud layer shows a single-day snapshot of clouds observed by Terra MODIS across the planet on July 29, 2001. City lights on Earth’s night side are visualized from data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program mission between 1994–1995. The topography layer is based on radar data collected by the Space Shuttle Endeavour during an 11-day mission in February of 2000. Topography over Antarctica comes from the Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Project, version 2.
Most of the data layers in this visualization are available as monthly composites as part of NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation image collection. The images in the collection appear in cylindrical projection (rectangular maps), and they are available at 500-meter resolution. The large images provided above are the full-size versions of these globes. In their hope that these images will inspire people to appreciate the beauty of our home planet and to learn about the Earth system, the developers of these images encourage readers to re-use and re-publish the images freely.
NASA images by Reto Stöckli, based on data from NASA and NOAA.
To learn the history of the Blue Marble go here:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_...
To learn more about the Blue Marble go here:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8108
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
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Comments and faves
ester68, Cristo Bolaños, Juanedc, sheeple herder, and 295 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Σταύρος (23 months ago | reply)
It's great that you share these pictures with us...:)
pressthebigredbutton (23 months ago | reply)
Incredible image, thankyou
Jesús VR (23 months ago | reply)
Fantastic photo!
karma-police (23 months ago | reply)
Cool. In high resolution you can even see the point at the north pole where the earth is hung up.
tereliyesajjan (23 months ago | reply)
Very interesting and beautiful too Thanks for sharing
omgitssyd (23 months ago | reply)
Whoah I THINK I CAN SEE MY HOUSE!!!
Almilius - www.alvarooliva.com (23 months ago | reply)
Great shot.
POONDOG64 (23 months ago | reply)
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called NO WORLD FOR TOMORROW, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
rmcarrier1 (23 months ago | reply)
Incredible digital composition! Love to see how the lights follow the route of the Nile river in Africa.
Gonza y Novo (23 months ago | reply)
Que maravilla, y estar vivo para disfrutarlo
mariannakoutna (23 months ago | reply)
Incredible beauty! :-)
gregpphoto (22 months ago | reply)
Home.
Das Imperator (22 months ago | reply)
Anyone seen a blue mitten? Oh wait I see it...
rick_fardy (21 months ago | reply)
wow
steve p2008 (21 months ago | reply)
WOW! you can see my house from here
Marmott73 (20 months ago | reply)
Superbe!!
cesarefratini (17 months ago | reply)
Fantastica !..
viacreativa (17 months ago | reply)
"The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed."
Teilhard de Chardin
Zfire1 (15 months ago | reply)
incredible so much to look at ...amazing colors ..bravo!!!
dranbi (15 months ago | reply)
amazing picture and a great information you share.
Roger Kemp (13 months ago | reply)
Is there some cloud cloning going on over the Atlantic?
space the final frontier (8 months ago | reply)
Very beautful, we must start to take better care of our home world.
stukinha (4 months ago | reply)
Beautiful! :)
Mara ~earth light~ (Convalescence after surgery) (3 months ago | reply)
thankyou :)
www.flickr.com/photos/mara_earthlight/6325952 751/in/photo...
steve p2008 (3 weeks ago | reply)
"Hello Earth" from my very tiny piece of it..
Julia Thomas. (3 weeks ago | reply)
WOW!!!
justo.prepucio (2 weeks ago | reply)
Nice photoshop!!!!:)))