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Satellite Data Combined for New 'Blue Marble'
By Andrew Chaikin
Executive Editor, Space and Science
posted: 02:39 pm ET
24 April 2000
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Just in Time for Earth Day: Blue Marble 2000 When the Apollo astronauts came back from the moon, they brought home a gift that we still treasure: a view of our planet as a finite -- and very beautiful -- world afloat in the blackness of space. Now, timed with the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, NASA scientists updated this view of the "blue marble" using data from a trio of satellites. 
Blue Marble 2000 is a composite view of the Earth's western hemisphere. Images to create the new view were acquired by three satellites in September 1997. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) acquired an image of cloud cover in the entire western hemisphere. Among the cloud formations in the image is Hurricane Linda, which is visible just off the western coast of Mexico. The data used to depict the oceans were collected by NASA's SeaWiFS satellite (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor). Continents were portrayed using a NOAA satellite-born instrument called the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. To make topographic details visible, the creators of this global image exaggerated heights of features by 50 times. Areas of heavy vegetation are colored green in the image; yellow denotes areas of more sparse plant cover. Finally, the image includes an artistic touch: A view of the moon acquired by the GOES satellite in September 1994 was inserted into the picture. Our satellite is shown about twice the size that it would actually appear from the satellite's vantage point, some 22,300 miles (35,887 kilometers) above the Earth.
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