After gracing us with increasingly splendid composite ‘Blue Marble’ images of our home sweet home, a series of consistently released shots which originated from the Apollo 17 crew in December of 1972, NASA has ventured to do what has never been done until now – release the first complete view of Earth from the North Pole, shown above.
The unprecedented composite, taken nearly 512 miles over the North Pole, was captured within the 15 orbits made by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, fitted and designed to take “radiometric measurements of the land, atmosphere, cryosphere, and oceans,” while measuring “cloud and aerosol properties, ocean color, sea and land surface temperature, ice motion and temperature, and fires.”
To view what NASA is calling ‘The White Marble’ at its original-res, be sure to click on the image above and take a peak at the 11,000 x 11,000 pixel behemoth in all its browser-breaking glory.
Source: Blue Marble 2012 Flickr | Via PopPhoto
