New awesome HiRes Earth image

[DavidU]

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP.

http://npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/VIIRS_4Jan2012.jpg

[multiweb]

So cool! But they got the framing wrong. I can't see Australia ;)

[jjjnettie]

I saw this on Yahoo. It's a real beauty. Even though they are imaging the wrong side of the planet.
But.....reading the comments on the yahoo site, people are saying it's a fake. It's a photo shop image....Where's the stars? It's fake no stars.
honestly....some people....

[Matt Wastell]

A stunning view - we must have the most beautiful planet out there!

[RobF]

So beautiful. I'm going to make a slice of this my desktop for a while I think...

[ballaratdragons]

Stunning! Thanks Davo.

I imagine it won't be too many years and amateur Astrophotographers will be getting this quality with Jupiter and Saturn :thumbsup:
Give them time and they will achieve it.

Could it be our current top Planetary Astrophotographers in another 5 years or so?
or the next generation of Planetary imagers in 15 - 20 years time?
Adaptive Optics, Cameras and software for us amateurs are making great progress. Imagine what is coming :)

[SkyViking]

That looks awesome, thanks for the link.
It does seem a little bit artificial around the edges though, especially at the top edge. There is no fading of the horizon? It looks more like hires images mapped onto a sphere.