Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

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Turrosh Mak
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by Turrosh Mak »

Trantor wrote:News from Suomi NPP:

"Black Marble"

Image

Still wrong side, beautiful though.
Seeing that image makes want to listen to Baba Yetu and fire up Civ 4.

fredgiblet
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by fredgiblet »

It's interesting to see the emptiness. The thin scattering of lights in the Midwest. The enormous hole in the middle of Brazil. I wonder how long it will be before those are filled in.

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Arioch
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by Arioch »

I was kind of wondering why in the first image, North America seems so large, especially in comparison to the new Black Marble images just posted that are purportedly from the same satellite. The answer turns out to be that they're all artificially-generated composites; the Suomi NPP is in a low 824km polar orbit, and it can only see a small swath of the Earth at any given moment. So the curvature and horizon we see in these images are completely artificial, and not observed from the satellite. I don't have any problem with composite images, but it's really puzzling why NASA would create images such as the one at the top of the page that have such inaccurate scaling.
fredgiblet wrote:It's interesting to see the emptiness. The thin scattering of lights in the Midwest. The enormous hole in the middle of Brazil. I wonder how long it will be before those are filled in.
I was thinking the same thing looking at this closeup from the same site:

Image

Part of the dark area is the Rockies that may never be filled in, but a lot of it is just flat empty. I'm guessing that a lot of the South American interior is also pretty rough terrain that's not ideal for settlement.

Also, notice in the image (click for enlarged version) all the lights off the coast of Louisiana. Some of them must be islands, but can they all be? Perhaps ships and/or oil platforms?

In the global version, it's interesting that the Beligum/Netherlands and northern Italy areas are so bright.

heh. Check out the difference between North and South Korea.

fredgiblet
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by fredgiblet »

Arioch wrote:but it's really puzzling why NASA would create images such as the one at the top of the page that have such inaccurate scaling.
Because America is larger than life (in more than one way).

Absalom
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by Absalom »

Arioch wrote:Also, notice in the image (click for enlarged version) all the lights off the coast of Louisiana. Some of them must be islands, but can they all be? Perhaps ships and/or oil platforms?
If you look, even on the version here on the forums you can see two sort-of lines extending east-southeast from the "toe" of Louisiana. I'm pretty sure that defines the furthest extent of Louisiana itself. Near to that & the Louisiana shoreline you'll still see some islands, but I think that you can somewhat make out the actual shallows from the light-blue patches on the full-size image. Anything beyond those shallows won't be an island. Thus, I think most of those lights are probably ships & such.

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Trantor
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by Trantor »

Arioch wrote:Also, notice in the image (click for enlarged version) all the lights off the coast of Louisiana. Some of them must be islands, but can they all be? Perhaps ships and/or oil platforms?
Oil rigs.

Arioch wrote:In the global version, it's interesting that the Beligum/Netherlands and northern Italy areas are so bright.
Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...
sapere aude.

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GeoModder
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by GeoModder »

Trantor wrote:
Arioch wrote:In the global version, it's interesting that the Beligum/Netherlands and northern Italy areas are so bright.
Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...
Not any more for the highways. Last time I drove through the Netherlands (a few years back already), the highways were dark after rush hours. And only last summer Belgium followed suit on the (admittedly short) stretches of highway between exits.
Most secondary roads are still illuminated, and since in the heartland there's a village every 3 kilometer (call it 1,5 miles, tops), a medium town every 15 km, and a big city every 40 km, that's still alot of illumination for domestic purposes.

On the map, what drew my attention where those two islands/atols east of Madagascar (southeastern African island), but then I realised those are two French oversea departments (Réunion and Mauritius). Things are pretty crowded there with about 2 million people spread out over barely 4500 square kilometers.
Image

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Trantor
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by Trantor »

GeoModder wrote:
Trantor wrote:Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...
Not any more for the highways. Last time I drove through the Netherlands (a few years back already), the highways were dark after rush hours. And only last summer Belgium followed suit on the (admittedly short) stretches of highway between exits.
That´s the afterglow then. See how hellish bright they were? :mrgreen:
sapere aude.

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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by GeoModder »

Trantor wrote:That´s the afterglow then. See how hellish bright they were? :mrgreen:
Quite an idea actually: Belgium and the Netherlands being responsible for the background radiation of the universe. :ugeek:
Image

discord
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Re: Suomi NPP Earth Image 2012

Post by discord »

look at it from another way, we humans have managed to do something rather awesome, we have lit up a planet! ... now lets go find another one to play with too.

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