Beautiful 'Black Marble' Views Show Earth At Night Like Never Before
USA At Night NASANASA's Suomi NPP satellite stitched together images taken on cloudless nights during 312 orbits. Aliens looking at our planet from a close distance could detect Earth's life in lots of ways, from the methane in our atmosphere to the reflectance of all the green plants. But only if they saw it at night would they understand that some life here is intelligent. This image and the video down below are the highest-resolution, best-detailed pictures of Earth at night ever taken to date. The Suomi NPP satellite, designed to study weather phenomena, can look at the dark Earth like never before. It is not nearly as dark as you might think. brightcove.createExperiences(); Highways across the American Midwest flicker in and out at tiny towns and rest stops, like a map of connect-the-dots. Along a line north from Houston, half the country is plunged in darkness, except for the great western oases...