'Blue Marble 2012': NASA's 'Most Amazing' High Def Image Of Earth So Far
by Mark Memmott, NPR -- Jan 25, 2012
The "Blue Marble" image of Earth snapped by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972 is one of the most famous photos ever taken. When it appeared, we all suddenly saw the world in a much different way.
Today the space agency unveiled what it's calling the "most amazing high definition image of Earth — Blue Marble 2012."
[...]
NASA Goddard Photo and Video
(All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license)
much larger image
Earth -- The Blue Marble
sos.noaa.gov
The Blue Marble is an incredibly detailed, true-color depiction of the Earth. NASA is responsible for this dataset made from a compilation of satellite images throughout 2001. [...] This could not be done in a single day or even a week because on any given day clouds are blocking a significant portion of the surface. The cloud image is a composite of three days worth of data. The first two days of data were collected in the visible wavelength and the third day was needed to get a view of the clouds over the poles using thermal infrared imagery.
The shading is true color with the oceans shades of blue, the clouds white and the lands varying from green to brown. The brown areas are the sands of the deserts. The shading of the land was done using a dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Data Center. [...]
Link to video
We DO live on one amazing planet.
It's truly tragic, we SO seldom find a government to match, the potential of our Big Blue Marble. Our One Earth. That we ALL must learn to somehow share ...