Black Marble 2016
This image of Earth at night in 2016 was created with data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched in October 2011 by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Each pixel shows roughly 0.46 miles (742 meters) across.
Scientists use the Suomi NPP night-lights dataset in many ways. Some applications include: forecasting a city’s energy use and carbon emissions; eradicating energy poverty and fostering sustainable energy development; providing immediate information when disasters strike; and monitoring the effects of conflict and population displacement. Scientists at NASA are working to automate nighttime VIIRS data processing so that data users are able to view nighttime imagery within hours of acquisition, which could lead to other potential uses by research, meteorological, and civic groups.
For More Information
See https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90008
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Image processing
- Joshua Stevens (SSAI)
Scientist
- Miguel Román (USRA)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
Suomi NPP VIIRS (Collected with the VIIRS sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.