26 January 2012
A New Image of Our Lonely Speck In The Great Enveloping Cosmic Dark
Posted by Dan Satterfield
You are here. This is a small version of the new NASA "Blue Marble" image.
The Apollo 17 blue marble image from 1972. Can you guess the month it was taken?? Hint-look way south.
NASA has used the new NPP Satellite to produce a new “Blue Marble” image that is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The NPP was launched back in October and I wrote about it then here. The fist Blue Marble image of Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on the way to the Moon in 1972. I like to show this image to students and ask them to tell me what time of year the picture was taken! Many will complain there is o date, but you really do not need one to get within about 4-6 weeks.
This new image is made up of a bunch of individual swaths of images as it passed over the Earth at an altitude of 512 miles on 4 January, 2012. The image above is just a low res view, and to get the jaw drooping view you need to download the 17 megabyte image. I am talking 8,000 by 8,000 pixels here, and unless you have a high-speed connection on a newer computer it may be too much for your system.
I have put the full image in a directory for you to download here:
Oh, and a credit for the title of this post goes to Carl Sagan of course. Images like this always make me think of his Pale Blue Dot.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.