Foto-Foto FANTASTIS Bumi dari NASA

NASA telah menunjukkan kepada kita pemandangan Big Marble (kelereng besar/Bumi), planet indah di mana kita hidup dan mempelajari ruang angkasa dan Bumi. Foto Marble pertama Big Blue dirilis pada tahun 1972 dan setiap rilis berikutnya gambar telah meningkat dalam kualitas sehingga rilis terbaru tahun 2012, Big Black Marble (Kelereng Hitam Besar), atau Earth at Night, sangat menakjubkan.

“This image of North and South America at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.” NASA added, “The day-night band observed Hurricane Sandy, illuminated by moonlight, making landfall over New Jersey on the evening of Oct. 29. Night images showed the widespread power outages that left millions in darkness in the wake of the storm.”

Satelit Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP)t diluncurkan tahun lalu oleh NASA, NOAA, dan Departemen Pertahanan. Satelit ini mengorbit 512 kilometer di atas permukaan planet kita dan memiliki sensor yang sangat sensitif yang dapat mendeteksi cahaya nokturnal yang dihasilkan oleh atmosfer bumi. Bahkan, ia dapat melihat cahaya yang dilepaskan dari lampu jalan tunggal atau satu lampu yang bersinar di kapal yang mengambang sendirian di laut. VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) membawa sensor cahaya rendah yang dapat membedakan lampu malam dengan resolusi spasial yang enam kali lebih baik dan resolusi tingkat pencahayaan (dynamic range) 250 kali lebih baik dari sebelumnya.

NASA menambahkan, "Sebuah gambar komposit global yang dibangun dengan menggunakan gambar-gambar  malam bebas awan dari satelit NASA dan National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), menunjukkan cahaya dari fenomena alam dan cahaya buatan manusia di seluruh planet secara lebih rinci daripada sebelumnya". Jadi ini adalah seri dari kelereng besar dalam Old, New, Aqua, Blue, Putih dan Hitam.

Jika Anda berpikir bahwa ini adalah rumah kita semua, terlepas dari daerah mana Anda berada, maka tampaknya suatu saat mungkin kita bisa mencapai perdamaian di Bumi rumah kita ini. Hal ini juga menunjukkan mengapa kita harus melindungi lingkungan kita. . . ini adalah milik anak-cucu Anda dan kita semua.

Black Marble – Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. NASA reported, “Unlike a camera that captures a picture in one exposure, the day-night band produces an image by repeatedly scanning a scene and resolving it as millions of individual pixels. Then, the day-night band reviews the amount of light in each pixel. If it is very bright, a low-gain mode prevents the pixel from oversaturating. If the pixel is very dark, the signal is amplified.” The Earth Observatory wrote of the night lights on our globe, “Scientists are using new images of Earth’s dark side to gain insight on human activity and poorly understood natural events.”

Black Marble Europe at night 2012. “For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also need to see Earth at night,” said Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA’s Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. “Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps.”

Black Marble – Asia and Australia. On Out of the Blue and Into the Black, Miller is quoted as saying, “The night is nowhere near as dark as most of us think. In fact, the Earth is never really dark. And we don’t have to be in the dark about what is happening at night anymore either.”

Composite map of the world assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.

Black Marble – City Lights 2012. NASA’s Earth Observatory said, “Earth at Night 2012: It’s the end of the night as you know it; you’ll see fine.”

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth – Blue Marble 2012.

The Blue Marble 2012 turned into a ‘White Marble’ with this snow and ice Arctic View. “Fifteen orbits of the recently launched Suomi NPP satellite provided the VIIRS instrument enough time (and longitude) to gather the pixels for this synthesized view of Earth showing the Arctic, Europe, and Asia.”

NASA Blue (Aqua) Marble 2007 West.

NASA Blue (Aqua) Marble 2007 East.

NASA’s Spacecraft View of Aurora Australis from Space. NASA file image acquired September 11, 2005.

Blue Marble – 2002.

Blue Marble 2002: At the time, “This spectacular ‘blue marble’ image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date.”

Blue Marble 2000.

Earth image and star field background, released in 2000.

First Blue Marble image captured from Apollo 17 on Dec 7, 1972. “View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast. Astronaut photograph AS17-148-22727 courtesy NASA Johnson Space Center Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.”

What is your favorite…Old, New, Aqua, Blue, White or Black Marble? Blue Marble – Astronaut photograph 1972; Blue Marble 2002; Aqua Marble 2005; Bottom row left to right: Blue Marble 2012; White Marble 2012; Black Marble 2012. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center wrote, “Since we have escaped the bounds of gravity, visions of Earth have inspired and captured the imagination. Here are a few of the most iconic views of our planet returned by both living astronauts and robotic spacecraft in orbit throughout the space age.

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