The Black Marble
NASA has released a jaw-dropping new image collection of the Earth at night, illuminated by constellations of electric humans. These images were collected in 22 days and 312 orbits by the Suomi NPP Earth observing satellite, then stitched together into a continuous, high-resolution image of the planet at night.
Take a look at the high-res zoom of the continental U.S. I’m sort of stunned at how orderly the pattern of dots becomes in the Midwest, a tiny town at the crossroads of every county highway from Chicago to Cheyenne.
NASA has the full details and some wonderful videos on their site. Download your next desktop wallpaper and check out the rest of the world here.
I can’t stop staring!!!
Milky Way Shows 84 Million Stars in 9 Billion Pixels
Side Note: The two images shown above are mere crop outs from ESA’s recent hit: The 9 Billion Pixel Image of 84 Million Stars. These two focus on the bright center of the image for the purpose of highlighting what a peak at 84,000,000 stars looks like.
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have released a breathtaking new photograph showing the central area of our Milky Way galaxy. The photograph shows a whopping 84 million stars in an image measuring 108500×81500, which contains nearly 9 billion pixels.
It’s actually a composite of thousands of individual photographs shot with the observatory’s VISTA survey telescope, the same camera that captured the amazing 55-hour exposure. Three different infrared filters were used to capture the different details present in the final image.
The VISTA’s camera is sensitive to infrared light, which allows its vision to pierce through much of the space dust that blocks the view of ordinary optical telescope/camera systems.
RBSP Night Launch
Credit & Copyright: Mike Killian
Sand People always break your rover to hide their numbers.
The Planet Mars
he doesn’t look very happy
Today’s political post
