NASA has released the latest image in its “Blue Marble” series, a dazzling high definition picture of Earth. Taken from the VIIRS instrument on NASA’s Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP, the composite image was captured on January 4 according to the NASA release.
See the dazzling image below:
As NPR points out, the original 1972 “Blue Marble” is similar to the wallpaper option on iPhones, but it’s a different shot. See the original “Blue Marble” image below:
[Ed note: This post originally misidentified the 1972 “Blue Marble” image as an iPhone wallpaper option. The iPhone wallpaper image is a different shot. We regret the error.]
David Taintor
David Taintor is the Front Page Editor at TPM, where he contributes to TPM's Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
sure is a lot of brown. what happened to all the green?
freaktown well the focal point is the Mojave Desert/ Northern Mexico in winter, so I'm thinking there wasn't a whole lot of green to begin with, but what can be seen of South America and the South Eastern US is fairly green.
Is seemingly isn't possible for a u.s. government operation to not be triumphalist. it could have provided many views of the earth but no only a u.s. centric one.
stevelaudig That's a Mexico centric view. How dare NASA peripheralize the USA!
stevelaudig Actually it looks a bit more Mexico-centric to me, or even Guatemala-centric.
gazpacho_kitstevelaudig Or, Aztlan-centric. Alert Glen Beck!!
stevelaudig Maybe, but in the form of a big runny bird dropping on a pretty blue marble.
I'm pretty sure that this photo is distorted in some way. There is no way that North America occupies that much space on the globe.
vavasseur It doesn't, but the image(s) is taken close enough to the Earth that we don't see an entire hemisphere.
Mathematically, if you see enough of a sphere that you see a circular silhouette, you are seeing an entire hemisphere. So, this doesn't explain it. I was thinking that it had something to do with the optics used and depth of field, which is considerable (i.e., in theory the distance from the surface to the center of the Earth).
vavasseur I think so too. Africa is larger than North America (30 vs 24 million square km according to Wikipedia), but the new image makes N.A. look way bigger than it should be.
Gaia gets around.
Georgeous!!! Wow.
So it is painfully obvious from the new image that NASA has been overtaken by Mexico. This is clearly why Mexico is centered in the image and not the country that god blessed, America. Sad, now a President Newt will have to dismantle ÑASA, rebuild it Mexican free and then get us to our new moon base all within 8 magical years.
Is that the BP oil slick visible near the mouth of the MIssissippi River?
turkeyfish No, this image is a composite of images taken January 4th. What you're seeing is the natural deposit of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico.
Phfew.... I'm just glad the Earth is still there.
This photo is another hoax perpetrated by the Libtarded-Scientific Establishment™, attempting to somehow "prove" that the Earth isn't flat.
spas485
I've heard that a lot of scientists do question the data behind the round earth "theory." Me, I don't know what to think...
Carlos Fiance The answer is clear: our schools should Teach the Controversy™.
spas485 This photo demonstrates, conclusively, that the Earth IS flat. It just happens to be circular.
spas485 My screen is flat therefore the earth must be.
spas485 And it certainly will end all that silly "scientific" stuff about global warming. That image is coooool!
Wow, I can see Russia...
You need to get off of Sarah's porch. Now. Off.
Most amazing to me is that, with all this resolution, the signs of human habitation are subdues if not invisible. Los Angeles: just a bit grayer (probably smog, but we'll be generous and say that is concrete). Same with San Francisco and Sacramento moving north. Most of the US is somewhere between brown and green. From this height, during the day, one might not notice that the planet was being laid waste by a parasitic infection of humanity.
At night, of course, it's a very different story, as seen by ISS <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev9oPUNaqXE&fea...;. All those lights!
Jet Tredmont It's also more visible in late spring. Miami is very visible in the high res image as are most of the major city not seen at a low angle.
Jet Tredmont I agree. Despite the fact that we are constantly filling our earth with unnecessary pollutants, the earth does still look beautiful from afar!
North America isn't very green.
tezcat Judging by the snow, this is a winter image.
imkmu Those white things are clouds. But yes the pictures were taken in January. "the composite image was captured on January 4 according to the NASA release"
andrewrbussiere *cough* The white on the mountains is snow.
tezcat Even if was taken in January it should be much greener. The color in the photo must have been edited.
Since there seems to be a running joke about locating SOMEONE'S EGO in the picture maybe we could confine them to one thread??
Eustace Tilley 2.0 The Snowbilly Filly shall not be confined to any one thread.
It's striking when you realize that faint ghostly blue halo around it is our entire atmosphere. It looks terribly thin, terrible fragile with just the right balance of gases. Change that balance too much and 12,000 years of human civilization--gone. All that we've done, all that we've worked for, gone forever. Extinction doesn't give second chances, and there is no divine hand to protect our fate. That delicate blue veil seems worth protecting to me.
imkmu GOD intelligently designed it that way, HEATHEN LIBTARD.
Eustace Tilley 2.0imkmu Nah, she just ordered it on Amazon.com.
dswximkmu Is she an Amazon Prime member?
Eustace Tilley 2.0imkmu Too bad he did such a poor job designing the planet's inhabitants, who apparently are, er, hellbent on destroying his magnificent creation.
imps23imkmu Doesn't the bible say, "here you go, LIBTARDS, it's yours to F*** up" or something like that?
Eustace Tilley 2.0imps23 "here you go, LIBTARDS, it's yours to F*** up" or something like that?" Yeah, that's about what I was told. Took me a few years to realize that it was all BS though.
Eustace Tilley 2.0 No deity could have had that much of a sense of humor.
imkmuEustace Tilley 2.0 Clearly you have not yet met Loki. Or Coyote, for that matter.
In the 8000x8000 version you can easily spot Newt Gingrich's Ego.
r2715seattle That would be visible in a 10x10 photo as well though
Tim Seaver Thanks. That is one amazing shot.
Tim Seaver The Gulf of Mexico looks cleaner than I'd expected.
And here's a picture of where Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan before we put one right between his eyes.
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