Stunning New NASA Video of the Earth at Night

Erin McCarthy
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Want to truly appreciate the Earth's beauty? Check out this gorgeous video, released by NASA this morning, of our planet at night.

The animation is a composite created using data from the Suomi NPP satellite, which was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. According to NASA, "It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet." You can see exactly how it was done in the video below.

And here are a few images of the so-called Black Marble you might want to consider using as a desktop background.

The United States


More sizes here.

The Nile River

More sizes

The World

More sizes

And you can find some incredible photos of the Blue Marble (Earth during the day) right here.

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