Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory/NOAA/DOD Earth at Night This
new global view of Earth's city lights is a composite assembled
from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting
Partnership (NPP) satellite. The data was acquired over nine
days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312
orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land
surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing
Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the
planet. The image was made possible by the satellite's "day-
night band" of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite,
which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to
near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim
signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires and
reflected moonlight. 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 darkne