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NASA Earth Observatory
The night lights of the Americas shine in this visualization of our planet at night, which is based on data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October. The image, released by NASA Earth Observatory today, has been nicknamed the "Black Marble."
NASA is known for its "Blue Marble" images, which show Earth's sunlit disk as seen from space — and now it's making a splash with the nighttime view, nicknamed the "Black Marble."
This picture of the night lights of North and South America is just one frame in the Black Marble series, which is based on data from the Suomi NPP satellite and was unveiled today during the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The image has been built up from readings made by the weather/climate satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS.
It'd be tough to snap this kind of picture at any single moment, because of cloud cover as well as seasonal changes in the way sunlight falls on our planet. Suomi NPP's handlers had an easier job, because the satellite could make multiple passes in April and October. Those fly-overs produced data that could be presented as a full-disk nighttime view of Earth.
NASA says the VIIRS instrument's "day-night band" is well-suited to pick up on dim signals such as city lights as well as gas flares, auroras, wildifires and reflected moonlight. For the Black Marble images, stray sources of light were removed during processing to emphasize the city lights.
"Artificial lighting is an excellent remote-sensing observable and proxy for human activity," Chris Elvidge, who leads the Earth Observation Group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center, said in today's image advisory.
NASA has released satellite images showing the night lights of Earth. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Weather forecasters are using the VIIRS imagery to track fog and low clouds through the night — which can be a concern for high-traffic coastal airports such as San Francisco. But it's not just about the weather: Researchers can track night lights over time to estimate economic activity and population growth. For example, satellite images graphically show how North Korea's economic development has lagged behind that of its neighbors, or how India has developed through the decades. Night-light pictures can also help facility planners decide where to put astronomical observatories that need dark skies, or help emergency officials gauge the extent of power outages.
“For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also need to see Earth at night,” Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA’s Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, said in a NASA news release. “Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps.”
A NASA video guides you through the "Earth at Night" imagery. Be sure to choose the HD version.
NASA Earth Observatory / NOAA NGDC
This composite map of the world was assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.
Check out the full array of Black Marble imagery, including an animation, at the NASA Earth Observatory website or Goddard Space Flight Center's Flickr gallery. Oh, and don't miss NASA's "White Marble."
These Black Marble views serve as today's offering in the Cosmic Log Advent Space Calendar, which cracks open a fresh picture of Earth as seen from space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. For more Advent calendar goodness, turn to The Atlantic's Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar and the Zooniverse Advent Calendar.
More images of Earth from space:
- 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
- Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
- Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
- Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
- 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Wow. Earth (and America) seems like such a beautiful and serene place when captured like this.
Yes, very beautiful. Wouldn't it be something to see an alien world light up like this?
And look at the vast expanses of darkness, or at least relative darkness, away from the population centers.
Amazing.
Yes.. very beatutiful i wish i could find them printed and mounted for gifts this year.. that would be cool.. instead, I am getting great gifts for less than $15 by doing some ofthe work myself. I am making everyonehomemeade spice mixes, wrapping them in decrorative baggies, and then giving them with a copy of the cookbook the mixes came from.. it's a little unpc, and not for everyone, but to find the book and the spice recipes, just google "whipped and beaten culinary works" and you will find it. but.seriously.. skip it it you can't take a joke..
Beautiful pictures.
Yea America looks soooooooooooo serene with that Hurricane pounding florida. Give me a break.
I took notice of the densely lite areas and I of course I knew china and the US would be...but some of the other areas are startling especially since some of these areas are considered 3rd world...the video at 1:11 states that its from the gases and oil of the ME...i guess i didnt realize there was so much
Looks like a storm's a-brewing off Bermuda
Looks like the northeast, specifically Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and western part of the NYC metro area were in cloud cover.
Looks like someone forgot to turn off the lights.
That single spot of light at the far left of the frame? Hawaii? A blown pixel?
Quite right, TheRealChris.
So, I look at Australia and realise that the 1 person per thousand km living in our Western Australian desert must have some bloody huge torches down there, this looks like total BS when compared to where people and our cities actually are situated.
Not all lights are from cities. Note the lights around the Persian Gulf and southern Nigeria...gas flares from wells. Same in W.A., perhaps...or lights from iron mines running 24/7?
If you look for the image of just the continental US, the lights in the Gulf of Mexico must also come from offshore oil platforms...
You can get these in seriously high resolution if you have any doubts, Ozholic...
Ozholic, that's the light from wildfires in Australia ... I believe there were quite a few of them in April, when some of the imagery for this view was captured.
You have to be kidding me about wildfires in a desert, gas flares, oil rigs whatever, but I could possibly accept alien bases as virtually no one, and I do mean no one lives where these lights are shown to be, almost all of our 20million+ population live on the eastern seaboard and last I heard, sand does not burn.
To suggest wildfires of this magnitude would exceed what the we see happen in Borneo and South America etc, where deforestation would show up as a few specks compared to what this fake shot shows of this part of the world.
Alan Boyle is right; that has been proven. Maybe some of the light is from those hottie aboriginal women dancing around the desert.
This is so amazingly beautiful that it's hard to believe that it is so amazingly unhealthy for the planet. Oh well, I don't really want to live in the dark either. Sure hope we can find some clean, sustainable energy soon.
Absolutely beautiful - strange seeing how much more the eastern part of the US is lit up compared to the more spread out areas going west. The composite picture really is spectacular - what a sight this would be from space.
it also indentifies some areas that could possibly be used for development. It appears we are much like rats...and all hide together...maybe if we were more spread out this world would be more healthy.
Well, it is a very beautiful "black marble" and it is kind of awe. There are more light noted on the east coast than any where, and it is just a business point view that the electrical utility companies may make business deals with our southern neighbors, such as South America.
Light pollution is the leading cause of people not realizing the pure majesty of the night sky.
I do miss seeing the sky...we dont get much of it here in Phoenix..you see stars but only a few...go up north and its just a whole diffrent world up there
Gorgeous,
Thanks Alan.
..oh, where the heck is sun? Just kidding!
Wauw. Amazing. Simply amazing.
Fantastic, but the night sky is just as great on a clear night if you get away from the light pollution in the eastern US. I spent some time in Beatty Nv last year on the eastern edge of Death Valley the night sky was awesome there. There are millions more stars visable there than anyplace east of the Mississippi river, it's like a whole different sky out there.
The night lights shown in these pictures represent criminal activity locations in the US the more lights you see the higher the criminal activity is. It;s a little like the beauty and the beast isn't it?
Something as humbling and serene as this....I can't help but feel that as human's it is our job to destroy it
Perfection!
We have dark night ordinances in our area, to keep down the light pollution.
Party Poopers!
wtf?
ur anus is much darker
Is that you talking or your experience?
Beautiful images. Does anyone suppose that our creator's intent was to be without artificial light? Just wondering how it would have looked from above millions of years ago!
Pitch Black Dark.
Now stop wondering.
When I see images like that it looks to me like the Earth has caught a terrible disease, that the lighted areas are points of infection with tendrils of the infection looking to spread the disease to all points.
I guess I'm more of a "the glass is ruined and not half full" person?
Screw the glass. Become the wine in it and declare to the world, "I'm no longer a party-pooper"
All of the Casino Lights
My first thought looking at this picture - Now I know all the awesome night spots around the world.
My second thought looking at this picture - African's don't seem to enjoy the night time much.
Perhaps they do.
And perhaps we do not - else why would we turn on all those lights. Afraid of the dark?
My first thought - Now I know all the awesome night spots around the world.
My second thought - African's don't really know how to party at night.
My third thought - My bucket list just doubled. Awesome.
My home is delightfully dark, though I can see the lights of Las Vegas 60 miles away. Beautiful pictures, wish everyone could see this and then think.