This view of Earth at night is a cloud-free view from space as acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Satellite (Suomi NPP). A joint program by NASA and NOAA, Suomi NPP captured this nighttime image by the satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The day-night band on VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, gas flares, and wildfires. This new image is a composite of data acquired over nine days in April and thirteen days in October 2012. It took 312 satellite orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of land surface.
This video uses the Earth at night view created by NASA's Earth Observatory with data processed by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center and combined with a version of the Earth Observatory's Blue Marble: Next Generation.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 347411, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11157/#media_group_347411", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "
For complete transcript, click here.", "items": [ { "id": 314521, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469972, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq00552_print.jpg", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq00552_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 314518, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469969, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq_web.png", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq_web.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "In daylight our big blue marble is all land, oceans and clouds. But the night - is electric.This view of Earth at night is a cloud-free view from space as acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Satellite (Suomi NPP). A joint program by NASA and NOAA, Suomi NPP captured this nighttime image by the satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The day-night band on VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, gas flares, and wildfires. This new image is a composite of data acquired over nine days in April and thirteen days in October 2012. It took 312 satellite orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of land surface.This video uses the Earth at night view created by NASA's Earth Observatory with data processed by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center and combined with a version of the Earth Observatory's Blue Marble: Next Generation.", "width": 180, "height": 320, "pixels": 57600 } }, { "id": 314519, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469970, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq_thm.png", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq_thm.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 80, "height": 40, "pixels": 3200 } }, { "id": 314511, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469967, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-prores.mov", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-prores.mov", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } }, { "id": 314512, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469966, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq.mov", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-youtube_hq.mov", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } }, { "id": 314514, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469963, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-appletv.m4v", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-appletv.m4v", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 960, "height": 540, "pixels": 518400 } }, { "id": 314520, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469971, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-720x480.webmhd.webm", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-720x480.webmhd.webm", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 960, "height": 540, "pixels": 518400 } }, { "id": 314513, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469962, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-portal.mov", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-portal.mov", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 640, "height": 360, "pixels": 230400 } }, { "id": 314515, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469964, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-ipod_lg.m4v", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-ipod_lg.m4v", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 640, "height": 360, "pixels": 230400 } }, { "id": 314517, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469965, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-720x480.wmv", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-720x480.wmv", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 720, "height": 480, "pixels": 345600 } }, { "id": 314516, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 469968, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011157/G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-ipod_sm.mp4", "filename": "G2012-129_Earth_At_Night-ipod_sm.mp4", "media_type": "Movie", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 320, "height": 240, "pixels": 76800 } } ], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 347412, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11157/#media_group_347412", "widget": "Basic text", "title": "For More Information", "caption": "", "description": "See [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/79803/night-lights-2012-the-black-marble](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/79803/night-lights-2012-the-black-marble)", "items": [], "extra_data": {} } ], "studio": "gms", "funding_sources": [ "PAO" ], "credits": [ { "role": "Animator", "people": [ { "name": "Trent L. Schindler", "employer": "USRA" }, { "name": "Robert Simmon", "employer": "Sigma Space Corporation" }, { "name": "Jesse Allen", "employer": "Sigma Space Corporation" } ] }, { "role": "Video editor", "people": [ { "name": "Kayvon Sharghi", "employer": "USRA" } ] }, { "role": "Narrator", "people": [ { "name": "Horace Mitchell", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" } ] }, { "role": "Producer", "people": [ { "name": "Kayvon Sharghi", "employer": "USRA" }, { "name": "Mike Carlowicz", "employer": "Sigma Space Corporation" } ] }, { "role": "Scientist", "people": [ { "name": "Christopher Elvidge", "employer": "NOAA/NGDC" } ] }, { "role": "Writer", "people": [ { "name": "Aries Keck", "employer": "ADNET Systems, Inc." } ] } ], "missions": [ "NPP" ], "series": [ "Narrated Movies" ], "tapes": [ "Earth At Night" ], "papers": [], "datasets": [], "nasa_science_categories": [ "Earth" ], "keywords": [ "Earth", "HDTV", "Narrated", "NPP" ], "recommended_pages": [], "related": [ { "id": 10624, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10624/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Instagram: Seeing Holiday Lights From Space", "description": "For all those people who have ever said, “I bet you can see my neighbor’s Christmas lights from space!” well, we now have proof that they’re right — at least in aggregate. For the first time, NASA researchers have measured the increase in Earth’s night lights during both the holiday period between Thanksgiving and New Years, in the U.S., and for the holy month of Ramadan in the Middle East.While we may not be able to see individual front yards, the satellite data has such good resolution that researchers from Yale University have been able to find correlations between political and socio-economic data for individual neighborhoods and the brightness measured from space. Researchers say being able to monitor our lighting output in this way is like being able to measure traffic on a highway, rather than just map the road itself.If we can understand the behavioral aspect of lights and energy use throughout the year it can shed light on our understanding of energy efficiency and human drivers of climate change. || ", "release_date": "2014-12-18T12:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:50:11.858670-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 448026, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010600/a010624/Holiday_lights_instagram_final_print.jpg", "filename": "Holiday_lights_instagram_final_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1024, "height": 1024, "pixels": 1048576 } }, { "id": 11146, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11146/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "The Night Electric", "description": "The night side of our planet twinkles with light, tracing a map of human settlement across Earth. Scientists have studied Earth's night lights in the past, using military satellites and astronaut photos; but in 2012, the view became significantly clearer. Data from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite was used to make a new composite view of Earth at night that allows scientists to quantify the intensity and sources of night light for the first time. A special low-light sensor on Suomi-NPP can distinguish night lights with six times better spatial resolution and 250 times better resolution of lighting levels than before, capturing even the dim light of an isolated highway lamp or a fishing boat at sea. Watch the videos to take a tour of Earth, sparkling in the dark of night. || ", "release_date": "2012-12-27T00:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:30.250387-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 470421, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011146/cover_earth_night_rotate_576.jpg", "filename": "cover_earth_night_rotate_576.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "A satellite looks back at Earth and sees a constellation of bustling cities and remote towns.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 4019, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4019/", "page_type": "Visualization", "title": "Unprecedented New Look at Our Planet at Night", "description": "In daylight our big blue marble is all land, oceans and clouds. But the night - is electric.This view of Earth at night is a cloud-free view from space as acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Satellite (Suomi NPP). A joint program by NASA and NOAA, Suomi NPP captured this nighttime image by the satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The day-night band on VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, gas flares, and wildfires. This new image is a composite of data acquired over nine days in April and thirteen days in October 2012. It took 312 satellite orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of land surface.This video uses the Earth at night view created by NASA's Earth Observatory with data processed by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center and combined with a version of the Earth Observatory's Blue Marble: Next Generation. || ", "release_date": "2012-12-05T12:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:33.187103-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 470092, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004000/a004019/W_E_asia.0001.jpg", "filename": "W_E_asia.0001.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Earth at Night, Asia", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }