UM-Bot Posted July 21, 2015 #1 Share Posted July 21, 2015 The breathtaking image was captured one million miles away by the Deep Space Climate Observatory. The picture is the first to capture the complete sunlit side of our planet since the Apollo 17 astronauts captured similar shots all the way back in 1972. Read More: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/283888/nasa-releases-new-blue-marble-earth-image 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted July 21, 2015 #2 Share Posted July 21, 2015 A high resolution version of the image can be found HERE in the Earth from Space section (gallery) of UM Space Exploration gallery 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeastieRunner Posted July 21, 2015 #3 Share Posted July 21, 2015 (edited) “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” -- Carl Sagan Edited July 21, 2015 by BeastieRunner 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twin Posted July 21, 2015 #4 Share Posted July 21, 2015 A little higher res at: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/187_1003705_americas_dxm.png Really cool, but Maybe I don't understand what hi res is, but the best NASA pictures I can find are all lower res than my $350 camera which produces pics with about 12,000,000 pixels. The link I posted above is the best I can find on the web at about 4,200,000 pixels. ???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted July 21, 2015 #5 Share Posted July 21, 2015 A little higher res at: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/187_1003705_americas_dxm.png Really cool, but Maybe I don't understand what hi res is, but the best NASA pictures I can find are all lower res than my $350 camera which produces pics with about 12,000,000 pixels. The link I posted above is the best I can find on the web at about 4,200,000 pixels. ???? Your 12,000,000 pixel camera will actually produce images at much lower resolution than that. The colour CCD it uses will alternate between a red pixel, a blue pixel and 2 green pixels 9because the human eye is more sensitive to green wavelengths). This means the your camera will effectively be taking four images in three wavelengths images with a resolution of only 3,000,000 pixels each. Most of the images NASA publishes use a monochrome CCD and use colour filters. For a natural coloured picture three separate images are taken through red, blue and green filters. These three images are then combined. This means that a NASA 4,000,000 pixel image is actually of a higher resolution than your 12,000,000 pixel image. You then have to take into account that what you are seeing on the internet are not the full resolution, raw images. Some of these are massive. Not everyone has super-fast broadband and so what you normally see on the websites are compressed images in formats such as JPEG. The final thing to take into account is that camera and smart phone manufactures know that most of the people that buy their products don't really know much about photography so they boast about the resolution of the CCD in what is effectively a con-trick. The size and quality of the lens a camera uses limits the resolution. It doesn't matter how big the CCD is if your camera has a small and/or cheap lens you simply won't get the promised resolution. CCDs have become cheap, good lens have not. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twin Posted July 21, 2015 #6 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Thanks Waspie, good info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daughter of the Nine Moons Posted July 21, 2015 #7 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Stunning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infernal Gnu Posted July 22, 2015 #8 Share Posted July 22, 2015 Pictures of the earth from deep space are aesthetically awesome yet scare the **** out of me. We are living on a tiny fragile island in the hostile vacuum of space. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patient Zero Posted July 22, 2015 #9 Share Posted July 22, 2015 So beautiful. And now my new wallpaper! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SD455GTO Posted July 22, 2015 #10 Share Posted July 22, 2015 A selection of some really large images can be found here. Not all are the same as the one above. https://goo.gl/PQn3QP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zalmoxis Posted July 24, 2015 #11 Share Posted July 24, 2015 (edited) Saved this one. I guess that after 30 years some people memorized the cloud patterns on the Apollo photos. What are those brighter aqua-blue patches off the eastern end of the American continent? Edited July 24, 2015 by Zalmoxis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waspie_Dwarf Posted July 24, 2015 #12 Share Posted July 24, 2015 What are those brighter aqua-blue patches off the eastern end of the American continent? Off the coast of Florida? I suspect it's the islands of the Carribean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zalmoxis Posted July 26, 2015 #13 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Off the coast of Florida? I suspect it's the islands of the Carribean. Those aren't islands because that aqua-blue hue also covers part of the middle American peninsula. Notice that area east of Florida? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now