January 30, 2012
Long before your first heartbeat, stars were busy forging the elements you would one day call your own.
Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP
Birthday · January 30, 2012
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published January 30, 2012. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Behold one of the more detailed images of the Earth yet created. This Blue Marble Earth montage shown above -- created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the new Suomi NPP satellite -- shows many stunning details of our home planet. The Suomi NPP satellite was launched last October and renamed last week after Verner Suomi, commonly deemed the father of satellite meteorology. The composite was created from the data collected during four orbits of the robotic satellite taken earlier this month and digitally projected onto the globe. Many features of North America and the Western Hemisphere are particularly visible on a high resolution version of the image. Previously, several other Blue Marble Earth images have been created, some at even higher resolution.