New awesome HiRes Earth image

[DavidU (Dave)]

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 (Marc)]

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

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

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 (Matt)]

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

[RobF (Rob)]

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

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Stunning! Thanks Davo.

I imagine it won't be too many years and amateur Astrophotographers will be getting this quality with Jupiter and Saturn
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 (Rolf)]

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.