Earth at night: the black marble

[Sayl]

Featured at the American Geophysical Union conference today...

Scientists unveiled today an unprecedented new look at our planet at night.

Away from human settlements, light still shines. Wildfires and volcanoes rage. Oil and gas wells burn like candles. Auroras dance across the polar skies. Moonlight and starlight reflect off the water, snow, clouds, and deserts. Even the air and ocean sometimes glow.

A handful of scientists have observed earthly night lights over the past four decades with military satellites and astronaut photography. But in 2012, the view became significantly clearer. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite — launched in October 2011 by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Department of Defense — carries a low-light sensor that can distinguish night lights with six times better spatial resolution and 250 times better resolution of lighting levels (dynamic range) than before. Also, because Suomi NPP is a civilian science satellite, data is available to scientists within minutes to hours of acquisition.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP can observe dim light down to the scale of an isolated highway lamp or fishing boat. It can even detect faint, nocturnal atmospheric light — known as airglow — and observe clouds lit by it. Through the use of its “day-night band,” VIIRS can make the first quantitative measurements of light emissions and reflections, distinguishing the intensity and the sources of night light. The sum of these measurements gives us a global view of the human footprint on the Earth.

[Full press release]

We've seen composite imagery like this before, but certainly not at this level of detail (acquired over 312 satellite orbits, processing 2.5 terabytes of data).

The full set of images and a complete interactive map are available at: The Black Marble

Edited to add: this backup link for Goddard's Flickr image gallery, since the Earth Observatory site is either having issues or inundated with traffic at the moment.

[Forfax]

That was amazing, really all that I can say.

Indeed it is.

[Klutzington]

I feel.... enlightened.

Buh-dum-tssh.

No really. That video was very intriguing.

[Arkenaw]

It's ok I guess. Stuff like this hasn't impressed me since I was 12.

[Collegeguy]

Meanwhile, in North Korea.

[Belize]

Can definitively make a comparison to Hive-Planets from fiction, where you see the giant circles of cities from space

[Frostys99]

It's ok I guess. Stuff like this hasn't impressed me since I was 12.

Always has to be someone who makes a comment like this

[Dhurn]

Meanwhile, in North Korea.

*pic*

Love that pic, guess Jon Stewart was pretty spot on when he called the lower east side of Manhattan "Little North Korea" after hurricane sandy

[Sayl]

Meanwhile, in North Korea.

http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/v...a_at_night.jpg

And it hasn't changed in at least 20 years.

[Deleted]

This is awesome, I rememeber the first time I saw the original picture of Earth at night, it was amazing. The landscape looked like spider webs in many places.

And my country has advanced somewhat. It's becoming harder to destinguish the borders with neighbours.

And it hasn't changed in at least 20 years.

Yes it has! South Korea is brighter.

[Zogarth]

Earth if pretty. And damn Australia is a dark place to live

[endersblade]

That was truly amazing. Thanks for that!

[Deathquoi]

It's ok I guess. Stuff like this hasn't impressed me since I was 12.

I think it's pretty awesome.

[Ciddy]

Nice! I still remember the first time I saw the "pale blue dot" image and how awesome that was. It's always cool to see stuff like this.

[Deleted]

Always has to be someone who makes a comment like this

And? He's right, this may have been impressive and interesting when you were a kid. Not today though, this belongs in the category common knowledge. Are you impressed when someone tells you the earth orbits around the sun as well?

[Mnevis]

Whenever I see a night-sky map, I'm looking at how far I'd have to go to get a good look at the night sky. I don't wish I lived in the boonies of Nevada or Arizona or Canada, but IMO looking up at clear dark night away from all these lights is a million times more impressive than looking down at them. Don't get me wrong, I love satellite imagery.

Earth if pretty. And damn Australia is a dark place to live

Anyone from AUS? Seemed like in that image, there were dozens of fairly huge wildfires going at once, is that real or is that a composite of, like, a whole summer?

And just because I was promised auroras and didn't get any: