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This new global view and animation of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in...
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Scientists unveiled today an unprecedented new look at
our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using
cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of
natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail
than ever before.
Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when
they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the sun. With a new
sensor onboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting
Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year, scientists now can
observe Earth's atmosphere and surface during nighttime hours.
The new sensor, the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging
Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), is sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal
glow produced by Earth's atmosphere and the light from a single ship
in the sea. Satellites in the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite
Program have been making observations with low-light sensors for 40
years. But the VIIRS day-night band can better detect and resolve
Earth's night lights.
The new, higher resolution composite image of Earth at night was
released at a news conference at the American Geophysical Union
meeting in San Francisco. This and other VIIRS day-night band images
are providing researchers with valuable data for a wide variety of
previously unseen or poorly seen events.
"For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also
need to see Earth at night," said Steve Miller, a researcher at
NOAA's Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research
in the Atmosphere. "Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps."
The day-night band observed Hurricane Sandy, illuminated by moonlight,
making landfall over New Jersey on the evening of Oct. 29. Night
images showed the widespread power outages that left millions in
darkness in the wake of the storm. With its night view, VIIRS is able
to detect a more complete view of storms and other weather
conditions, such as fog, that are difficult to discern with infrared,
or thermal, sensors. Night is also when many types of clouds begin to
form.
"The use of the day-night band by the National Weather Service is
growing," said Mitch Goldberg, program scientist for NOAA's Joint
Polar Satellite System. For example, the NOAA Weather Service's
forecast office in Monterey, Calif., is now using VIIRS day-night
band images to improve monitoring and forecasting of fog and low
clouds for high air traffic coastal airports like San Francisco.
According to Goldberg, VIIRS images were used on Nov. 26, the Monday
after Thanksgiving, to map the dense fog in the San Francisco Bay
area that resulted in flight delays and cancellations.
Unlike a camera that captures a picture in one exposure, the day-night
band produces an image by repeatedly scanning a scene and resolving
it as millions of individual pixels. Then, the day-night band reviews
the amount of light in each pixel. If it is very bright, a low-gain
mode prevents the pixel from oversaturating. If the pixel is very
dark, the signal is amplified.
"It's like having three simultaneous low-light cameras operating at
once and we pick the best of various cameras, depending on where
we're looking in the scene," Miller said. The instrument can capture
images on nights with or without moonlight, producing crisp views of
Earth's atmosphere, land and ocean surfaces.
"The night is nowhere as dark as we might think," Miller said. And
with the VIIRS day-night band helping scientists to tease out
information from human and natural sources of nighttime light, "we
don't have to be in the dark anymore, either."
"The remarkable day-night band images from Suomi NPP have impressed
the scientific community and exceeded our pre-launch expectations,"
said James Gleason, Suomi NPP project scientist at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
INFORMATION:
For images and additional information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/earth-at-night.html
NASA-NOAA satellite reveals new views of earth at night
2012-12-06
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
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