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Saturday, December 22, 2012

LIGHTS BACK ON: WHAT NIGHT SAYS ABOUT US


SATELLITE REVEALS OUR DARK SIDES-- The end of the Mayan calendar was not doomsday.  Obviously, the planet survived.  For once a deadline carved in stone was meaningless.  Moving on to the image at hand, it is the USA at night assembled in composite from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.

The image was made possible by the new satellite’s “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), 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.

“Nighttime light is the most interesting data that I’ve had a chance to work with,” says Chris Elvidge, who leads the Earth Observation Group at NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center. “I’m always amazed at what city light images show us about human activity.”
Debris from 12-21-12 Doomsday

Scientists seeking to model the distribution of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and to monitor the activity of commercial fishing fleets have approached his research group. Biologists have examined how urban growth has fragmented animal habitat. Elvidge even learned once of a study of dictatorships in various parts of the world and how nighttime lights had a tendency to expand in the dictator’s hometown or province.

Named for satellite meteorology pioneer Verner Suomi, NPP flies over any given point on Earth's surface twice each day at roughly 1:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. The polar-orbiting satellite flies 824 kilometers (512 miles) above the surface, sending its data once per orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, and continuously to local direct broadcast users distributed around the world. Suomi NPP is managed by NASA with operational support from NOAA and its Joint Polar Satellite System, which manages the satellite's ground system.

Sources:
NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data provided courtesy of Chris Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center). Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense. 

UPDATE:  NASA explains why the world didn't end on 12-21-12.  Go to link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=156889371

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