How NASA Makes Super High Resolution Images of Earth

Last month we shared an ultra-high resolution image of Earth with you, courtesy of NASA’s Suomi NNP satellite. Now we’re back to highlight the process by which NASA generates such beautiful images.
Wired Magazine shares a great overview of how the satellite creates such fantastic and high-resolution images. They write:
How were these highly detailed images created? The satellite flies 512 miles above the Earth, but the images appear as if they were taken from a much higher perspective: an altitude of 1,242 for the first image and 7,918 miles for the second. This little trick was accomplished by stitching together data from several orbits, creating an image that appears to be “pulled back.”
NASA launched the 4,600-pound Suomi in October to remotely sense variations in the Earth’s oceans, continents, and atmosphere and get a better understanding of climate change. It passes directly from pole to pole 14 times a day, imaging 1,865-mile swaths of our planet with each trip.
Hit up the link below for more information on the process.
How NASA Makes Those Incredibly High-Res Images of Earth [Wired]

Satellite Image Captures North American in 8,000 Pixels [Astronomy]

If you’re looking for a new wallpaper this ultra-high resolution image of the Earth’s surface spans a whopping 8,000 by 8,000 pixels.
Courtesy of NASA and the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the image provides an intimate look at North America. Although this image is floating around the internet with the claim attached that it is the highest resolution image of Earth ever taken, that’s simply untrue. The Los Angeles Times explains:

Some media outlets have reported that the image is the largest image ever made of our planet, but Norman Kuring, the NASA oceanographer who actually made the image, told The Times that simply is not true.
“I’m surprised that it’s gone viral,” he said. “I think what’s happening in the general public is seeing a larger image than they are used to seeing, but there have been higher sensing instruments around for a number of years.”
Kuring explained that this particular image was made using data collected by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite, which is on a satellite flying 512 miles above the Earth. VIIRS is not really a camera — rather it has a scanning telescope that measures the difference between the amount of light coming down to the surface of Earth from the sun as compared to the amount of light that is reflected back to the telescope. Kuring made the image above by running code that translates that data into an image.

The last paragraph is really what makes the image the most fascinating for us–the massive image is actually a composite of data collected from scanning instruments and not, as one would expect, simply a panorama of photographs snapped from space.
Hit up the link below to grab pre-sized wallpaper images or the master 8000×8000 image to custom crop for your desktop.
Blue Marble [via LA Times]