They are both lovely composites, and I hope they eventually release one of the PacRim, although to see Te Ika-a-Māui, I guess I'll have to put up with that giant penal colony to my West taking most of the attention, as usual.
Second 'Blue Marble' NASA sat pic apes Apollo 17's stunner
After popular demand NASA's Suomi NPP satellite has beamed down another "Blue Marble" vision of the Earth in high definition. 'Blue marble' image of Africa and the Middle East Latest 'Blue Marble' image of Africa and the Middle East. Credit: NASA/NOAA The agency said that it decided to put out a second image of our planet …
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Friday 3rd February 2012 11:00 GMT Tony Barnes
Prefer the original
Though these composites are gorgeous, they really aren't a patch on that shot from '72.
The banding from the ocean reflections is the main culprit in ruining things for me, makes it look like the earth isn't spherical. Plus it's perfect daylight everywhere - again, boom, not a sphere illuminated by a single lightsource anymore. So techincally impressive, initially attractive, but ultimately full of fail.
When its decomissioning time, they should strap some boosters to Hubble, bob her off a bit into the solar system, and get a nice close up from there - would be a lovely shot. Hmmm, would be nice to do fly-by's of the whole solar system...
-
Friday 3rd February 2012 14:16 GMT Gary B.
Good idea, except...
How exactly would we strap on boosters to Hubble, now that the US doesn't have any manned space vehicle? As far as I'm aware, the Shuttle would be the only space vehicle capable of getting humans to Hubble to strap on any boosters (pretending for a moment that such a mission would even be technically possible).
Brilliant idea, retiring the Shuttle before a new space vehicle is available...or even in the process of being built.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 09:43 GMT Yag
Good idea, in theory...
Trouble is that Hubble was never designed for this.
- The solar pannels will not be enough to power the craft once it's far from the sun (mars or jupiter far). The use of radioisotopic generators in most deep space missions is not for 50s-60s-nuclear-power nostalgia reasons...
- The antena was designed with a "few thousand kilometer" range in mind, not "few millions"
- Where the heck can we strap those boosters...
- ... and the structure of the poor thing may be teared apart by the thrust...
- ... and even if the structure resist, the optics may have a hard time.
etc, etc...
Indeed, you shall be able to take a nice medium range shot of the Earth, but the cost of the mission will be quite prohibitive for just a couple of photos.
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 3rd February 2012 13:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
That I grant you, but can I nominate second place?
It has to be the first shot of the Earth Moon system which was captured by Voyager 1 from over 7 million miles out.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/earth/vgr_earth_moon.jpg
BTW if you've never seen them, the Earthrise images sent back by the Soviet Zond 7 probe (an unmanned trial of a possible manned lunar mission) are quite beautiful:
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Zond07_1.jpg
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Zond07_6.jpg
-
-
Saturday 4th February 2012 18:41 GMT Mike Flugennock
good point...
...as made by a couple of other folks here. The new fotos are of higher resolution, but are mosaics, so that the Earth appears unnaturally, uniformly lit, not as it actually appears in space -- a globe lit by the Sun, as we can see in the Apollo 17 foto, and the famous "Earthrise" fotos shot by the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 crews.
-
-
-
Saturday 4th February 2012 18:29 GMT Mike Flugennock
Made of awesome, from a technical standpoint, but...
...I still like the Apollo 17 version better, if only because there was a human behind the camera, instead of a robot -- and because it takes me back to some of the better days of my adolescence.
A human can gaze out the window at a sight like that and have impressions and feelings and describe them. All the robot can do is transmit the image data; it can't have an experience.
As awesome as the MER rovers are, they can't pause from drilling a rock, gaze out across the landscape and muse reverently, "magnificent desolation".
Still in all, a killer foto. Pretty strange artifacts created by the sun glint in the mosaic strips, though.
-
Saturday 4th February 2012 22:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not worth the ink...
Those dirty gray bands ruin it.
With all the geostationary satellites up there, nobody has bothered to bolt on a nice camera to any of them? MAJOR FAIL. The "500 Channel" (TV) universe, and the only Live Feed from space is from the ISS staring at cloud tops? The NASA TV feed from the ISS is okay, but we should have at least a half dozen HD feeds of Earth to replace some of the mindless fare. Three geostationary feeds from 120° spaced birds. Zoomed in to fill the frame. Auto exposure so that night side also looks interesting. Full motion so we can see lightning. Another polar orbiting feed. Etc.