Ever wonder what our world looks like from way out in space? Wonder no longer.
NASA's Earth Observatory has released an amazing animation showing our planet from space in a time-lapse video that flies through the six months, from January 18 to July 25 of this year, in six seconds. While the planet slowly revolves, we get a view of Africa and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And there is the chaotic swirl of clouds in the atmosphere, the unending breathing of the world.
The animation is titled "Blue Marble, Eastern Hemisphere" and is a composite of photographs from eight different orbits of the Suomi NPP satellite, capturing 10 different channels with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), then stitched together to create a coherent portrait of the planet. Besides the detailed animation, NASA also released a single 4K still from March 30 where the details of the land masses and cloud spirals can really be seen.
"After having the privilege of flying shuttle missions and seeing Earth from the vantage point of space, I'll never forget observing our fragile planet from above with no visible political borders, only those established by the oceans and mountains and other geography," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a statement. "It's a reminder that our planet belongs to everyone, and we each have a responsibility to help protect it. For NASA, that means making Earth science a priority investment. It's one of the cornerstones of our work."
NASA notes that two new Earth-observing satellites have recently launched: the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), launched in February, and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2), which went up to space in July. Three more satellites will go up over the next six months: the wind-measuring ISS-RapidScat, the ISS Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. All of these satellites, as well as research planes, collect imagery along different wavelengths of light and various kinds of data to create an exhaustive picture of the planet.
