NASA updates the view of our home planet with their latest 'Blue Marble' photo every few years. These high-resolution images show incredibly detailed views of Earth, as taken by a satellite. Here's the latest taken by NASA's Suomi NPP.
As Gizmodo points out, the last 'Blue Marble' image is one that many iPhone users are already familiar with: it's been the iPhone's default background since 2007.
The previous image was undeniably high resolution at 2048 x 2048 pixels, but this new image blows it out of the blue water. Suomi's snapshot of the 'Blue Marble' is available in an astounding 8000 x 8000 pixel resolution.
The Suomi NPP satellite, renamed on January 24 in honour of late meteorologist Verner E. Suomi, was launched on October 28, 2011. It was first designed to collect weather information for both short and long-term forecasting.
According to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Flickr account, the image is comprised of multiple swaths of the Earth's surface as taken by the satellite on January 4.
The Blue Marble series of photos began back in 1972, when astronauts on the Apollo 17 mission took the first image that gave the public an idea what the Earth looks like as a whole planet.
Here is the photo from 1972.
(NASA photos)
