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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Earth




Need something to put things into perspective on a Monday morning? Our suggestion: The largest single-shot photo of Earth ever taken.
Eclipsing NASA’s updated “Blue Marble” shot, which is a composite of many satellite images, this image is a single-shot taken from 22,369 miles away by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1.
The colors on the 121-megapixel photo are quite different from the ones on NASA’s photos of Earth. To capture the image, the satellite combines visible and infrared wavelengths of light. Infrared light is used to see plants, which is why the parts of the Earth that would normally be green are seen as rusty brown.
Check out a time-lapse video of Earth’s northern hemisphere taken by Elektro-L below.
You can explore the zoomable version of the image here.
The zoomable image is modified to show the infra-red portions as green.

3 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

I foresee hours of fun. Thanks.

LindaG said...

Oi. I thought you wrote 'explore the zombie version'. Guess I'm more tired than I thought.

JohnD said...

lol! "ZOOMABLE" version, Linda!

Truly, that was a 'cut and paste' exercise on most of the dialogue and I'm not even sure "zoomable" is a word in the English language.