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NASA Releases New High-Definition Image of Earth

Posted by timothy on from the texas-centric-view dept.

New submitter klchoward writes "Working for NOAA, I have been really pleased to see the weather data from the new Suomi NPP satellite coming into our computer models already but have been blown away by its capability to take stunning high-definition images of our planet. See the article at Huffington Post or go straight to the image at NASA's website." Reader derekmead has some images from further afield, too: these beautiful images of Mars come from NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

30 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Heyt! by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can see my house!

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    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  2. What a miserable looking mud ball by oodaloop · · Score: 2

    Send a robot probe!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    1. Re:What a miserable looking mud ball by ewg · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you don't like it, go someplace else.

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    2. Re:What a miserable looking mud ball by spidercoz · · Score: 2

      don't worry, it's scheduled for demolition next week

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
    3. Re:What a miserable looking mud ball by kimvette · · Score: 2

      No big loss. After all, its inhabitants concern themselves entirely too much about the movement of green paper, and still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  3. Copyright Infringement! by mdsharpe · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait a minute, I've seen a photo a bit like that before. Quick, call the lawyers!

    1. Re:Copyright Infringement! by jtseng · · Score: 2

      Did they get it from Megaupload? Someone tell Chris Dodd...

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      Sanity.html - Error 404 not found

  4. Link to original size pic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/618486main_earth_full.jpg

    1. Re:Link to original size pic. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The overall(presumably composite) pic is pretty cool looking; but does anybody know if they have the data available in the less-immediately-elegant-but-rather-more-useful georectified form?

      As wallpaper, the press shot can hardly be beat. If they have the GeoTIFFs somewhere, though, that would have much broader application...

    2. Re:Link to original size pic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Original data sets suitable for conversion to texture maps are available. Start with these links:

      http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/
      http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_cat.php?categoryID=1484

    3. Re:Link to original size pic. by gcnaddict · · Score: 2

      Looking at the top of the sphere in the image, it's apparently to me that the image itself is a 3D rendering resulting from many land shots of the Earth stitched together.

      NASA readily admits that this is a composite image, but perhaps mentioning that it's a composite of land-pass images stitched together on a 3D sphere modeled after the Earth would make more sense. People might otherwise just assume this is a composite of photographs taken from and stiched together in 2D.

      It does make me wonder why the rendering wasn't anti-aliased, though.

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    4. Re:Link to original size pic. by idontgno · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm not sure I'm following where you're leading. This is a composite; it's a composite of Earth-view swaths of a sun-synchronous polar orbiting earth observation satellite. The "native geolocation space" of the images is a swath approximately 3000 km wide and tracking under the orbital path of the spacecraft (i.e., ground-track Mercator). This image is based on reprojecting those swaths to the geoid, so it looks like you're floating above the Equator and looking down at Earth.

      As to anti-aliasing, I dunno. This isn't a standard product of Suomi's ground system, so whatever aesthetic and technical decisions are reflected in this image are entirely on the NASA folks who did this.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  5. That's our home... by jtseng · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We have to love it since we can't leave it.

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    Sanity.html - Error 404 not found

  6. Too Large by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The North American continent is too large. Or the Earth is too small.

    It is very bothersome, and creates the illusion that the USA is much larger than it is!

    1. Re:Too Large by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually on further inspection it seems that this was electronically generated from sweeps of the Earth, and therefore they could've chosen any perspective they wanted, but the horizon distance in the image is correct for someone looking from 500 miles above that spot.

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      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  7. In next episode of CSI:whatever by gmuslera · · Score: 3, Funny

    Enhance!

  8. Looks like it is photoshopped. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like they have done some serious photoshopping. I could not see any of the lines showing the state borders. May be they erased it for security reasons. Also I did not see the pink tear drop like thingie with A, B etc written on it. Simply put, it does not look anything like the satellite images I have seen in maps.google.com.

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  9. What we need... by wbr1 · · Score: 2

    ...is for every politician and corporate bigwig to have an image like this permanently tattooed onto their retina. Maybe then they would realize how small, fragile, and insignificant we really are in the grand scheme of things. It's nice thinking but it seems that greed and short-sightedness win the day most of the time.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:What we need... by jc42 · · Score: 2

      ...is for every politician and corporate bigwig to have an image like this permanently tattooed onto their retina.

      Nah; that image would mostly impress American politicians with the "fact" that the only continent visible from space is North America. South America, Africa and Eurasia simply don't exist, or are too insignificant to include on a picture of the Earth. For that matter, Canada doesn't seem to exist, either.

      Yeah, yeah, I know; it's what was visible from one point 500 miles (800 km) up from just one point on the satellite's orbit. But we have a lot of replies already that seem to be pushing the idea that that's what's visible from space ;-)

      I wonder if we can find the full series of similar images from other spots on the orbit.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  10. Re:Where is all the "green"? by tverbeek · · Score: 3, Informative

    The picture was taken a few weeks ago. The high-latitude and high-altitude parts of North America aren't very verdant this time of year.

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    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  11. Admit it... by kryliss · · Score: 5, Funny

    How many of you had the urge to zoom in with your mouse wheel?

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    --- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
  12. Just USA seen from space. Not whole Earth. by Schwarzy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I much prefer this one about Apollo-1 crew:

    http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2160.html

    Very nice shot. Reminds also how difficult and dangerous was the space race.

  13. Wow! Who knew? by Jawnn · · Score: 2

    Mexico is the center of the world.

  14. It's not a photograph by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's pretty, but it's not a photograph of the earth. It's CG; a rendering of a sphere texturemapped with images of the surface of the planet that they captured. Neither NASA nor huffpost are misrepresenting what it is, but there's something special about the original blue marble, which is an actual *photograph* of the entire planet, not something thrown together in 3ds max.

    1. Re:It's not a photograph by Lev13than · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a little sad that the last time any human was able to see the entire earth at once was December 1972. That's like traveling across the ocean and then coming home and sitting on your front porch for the next 30 years.

      --
      When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
  15. Suomi :-) by CptPicard · · Score: 3, Informative

    As a Finn, I'm glad to have "Finland" (in Finnish) up there in orbit :-)

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    1. Re:Suomi :-) by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apparently, it was named after Verner Suomi, so it's not a direct reference to our country, but there is a Finnish ancestry nevertheless.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  16. Cloud-Free update? by gr8_phk · · Score: 2

    Will they be producing a new higher resolution version of the cloud-free earth? That would be nice - more pixels and more up to date.

  17. Where is it? by tequila_j · · Score: 2

    Meh, It miss a lot of countries. That picture can't be real

  18. Re:My 1/2 gig PC cried by inpher · · Score: 2

    gig 1 |gig| noun
    1 chiefly a light two-wheeled carriage pulled by one horse.
    2 a light, fast, narrow boat adapted for rowing or sailing.

    I too would like to know if it is half a boat or half a carriage.