The Eastern Hemisphere

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The Blue Marble 2012 photo that we told you about last week, had an amazing reception with more than 3.2 million views to date. That’s why NASA Goddard Photo and Video decided to create another Blue Marble 2012 view, this time showing the Eastern Hemisphere.

“The new image is a composite of six separate orbits taken on January 23, 2012 by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite. Both of these new ‘Blue Marble’ images are images taken by a new instrument flying aboard Suomi NPP, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).” NASA describes in detail how the Blue Marble photos are created and shares more background information in this “How To” image uploaded alongside the new view.

Even topping the size of the previous view of Earth, NASA has uploaded the 132.25 Megapixel version to Flickr. From the large size you can click through to see the original 11500 x 11500 image on Flickr.

Photo and quote from NASA Goddard Photo and Video.