(Source: NASA/NOAA)
The original Blue Marble image is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on 7 December, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres.
The original image displayed the simple beauty of the place we call home, and today's new picture captures some of that beauty.
This new natural-colour composite image of Earth was assembled from data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi satellite from an altitude of 824 kilometres, and emphasises the blue in our blue marble.
Most of the scene is filled by the Indian Ocean (centre and left), while parcels of the Atlantic (top left) and Southern Ocean (bottom) fill in the rest and remind us that it is all really one ocean.
The image also includes southern Africa and Madagascar, with Tropical Cyclone Joalane swirling in the Indian Ocean.
Suomi does not actually observe Earth from the perspective shown in this image.
The probe's virtual camera looked down from the perspective of 8300 kilometres above a point at 50°S latitude and 40°E longitude.
The image stitches together 671, 551, and 443-nanometre wavelength data from six polar low Earth orbits on 9 April, 2015.
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 to show support for environmental protection. It's now an annual event coordinated by more than 192 countries every April 22nd to highlight our planet's beauty, majesty, and fragility.
EARTH IMAGE by Stuart Gary
ABC
No comments:
Post a Comment