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Image description: This new global view of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth’s land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.
View a larger image.
Image from NASA’s Earth Observatory/NOAA/DOD

Image description: This new global view of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth’s land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.

View a larger image.

Image from NASA’s Earth Observatory/NOAA/DOD

Image description:
From NASA’s Earth Observatory:
There have been many images of the full disc of Earth from space – a view often referred to as “the Blue Marble” – but few have looked quite like this. Using natural-color images from the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the recently launched Suomi-NPP satellite, a NASA scientist has compiled a new view showing the Arctic and high latitudes.

Image description:

From NASA’s Earth Observatory:

There have been many images of the full disc of Earth from space – a view often referred to as “the Blue Marble” – but few have looked quite like this. Using natural-color images from the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the recently launched Suomi-NPP satellite, a NASA scientist has compiled a new view showing the Arctic and high latitudes.
Image description: This high-resolution image of the Earth was taken from the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of shots of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.
Suomi NPP is NASA’s next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.
Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.
 Read more about NASA’s Suomi NPP.
Photo by NASA

Image description: This high-resolution image of the Earth was taken from the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of shots of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.

Suomi NPP is NASA’s next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.

Read more about NASA’s Suomi NPP.

Photo by NASA

Happy World Ocean Day!

Image description: A sunset viewed from Kure Atoll, located near Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. An atoll is an island of coral that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. Photo from the National Ocean Service on Flickr. 

Learn about the world’s oceans from the National Ocean Service.

Happy World Ocean Day!

Image description: A sunset viewed from Kure Atoll, located near Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. An atoll is an island of coral that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. Photo from the National Ocean Service on Flickr.

Learn about the world’s oceans from the National Ocean Service.

Rare Midnight Eclipse Tonight

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Image description: A “midnight Sun” eclipse photographed by Oddleiv Skilbrei in northern Sweden on July 31, 2000.

NASA reports that a partial solar eclipse will occur at around midnight tonight:

“It might sound like a contradiction to have a solar eclipse in the middle of the night, but this is what we will see in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland on June 1st,” says Knut Joergen Roed Oedegaard, an astrophysicist at the Norwegian Centre for Science Education in Oslo.

A previous “midnight Sun” eclipse photographed by Oddleiv Skilbrei in northern Sweden on July 31, 2000. The eclipse of June 1, 2011, will be more than twice as deep. At this time of year, he explains, the sun doesn’t set in Arctic parts of the world, so a solar eclipse is theoretically possible at all hours of the day. When the clock strikes local midnight in northern Norway at the end of June 1st, about half of the lingering sun will be covered by the Moon.

“The eclipse can also be seen from Siberia, northern China, remote parts of Alaska and Canada, and Iceland,” writes Fred Espenak of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where the eclipse circumstances were calculated. “Greatest eclipse occurs at 21:16 Universal Time on June 1st. At that time, an eclipse of magnitude 0.601 will be visible from the Arctic coast of western Siberia as the midnight sun skirts the northern horizon.”

NASA has provided a list of times when the eclipse will be visible around the world (PDF), but you can just watch it online if you don’t live close enough to the North Pole.