Earth In High-Def

Last month NASA released high resolution images of Earth, which have been heralded as the most detailed images yet. From the UK Telegraph, March 2, 2010:

"Perfectly capturing the fragility of the Earth in one remarkable shot, the composition shows the entire North American continent, Central America, the northern half of South America, Greenland and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

[Beautiful, yes! Fragile, well, see my earlier post...]

"The space agency produced the stunning series of images using thousands of satellite-based observations hundreds of miles above the planet.

"The images of the earth’s land surface, oceans, coastlines and clouds were then stitched together by scientists to create the seamless mosaic of Earth.

"Astronomers at the Goddard Space Flight Centre produced the series, called 'Blue Marble', using the Terra satellite more than 435 miles (700km) above the Earth's surface.

"They also produced an accurate example of the Earth's topography, ocean depths and Arctic and Antarctic ice.

"After capturing images every eight days – to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view – the composition has even left NASA experts astonished.

"'This image is the most detailed image of Earth to date and which shows the beauty of our small planet," a NASA spokesman said.

"The imagery, which is used by Apple as the iPhone’s default icon, was compiled by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imagining Spectroradiometer (MODIS), which is on-board the satellite Terra.

The high resolution image can be seen here.

Happy Earth Day! Ain't she a beaut?!