Today, NASA released an incredible “blue marble” image of the Earth. It was created by combining a bunch of smaller photos to create one massive 64-megapixel image (8,000×8,000 pixels).
You can check out the full resolution image by clicking here.
Awesome.
I saw that image earlier today, and it struck me as a little odd. Then I think I put my finger on it – North America is way too big. There’s no room at all on that globe for South America.
Consider this – Florida is about 500 miles long, and the distance across the globe in that composite is about eight Florida’s, or 4000 miles (I measured it). And yet, the diameter of the Earth is roughly 8000 miles. I don’t believe in a flat Earth, I believe NASA landed a man on the moon (a couple of times), and I’m not a conspiracy theorist. Maybe I’m making something out of nothing, but I’m just not comfortable with this image. To me it just looks wrong.
@Jomegat – Great observation. I didn’t notice that until you pointed it out: North America looks way too big. It looks like NASA created the image by projecting some photos of North America onto a sphere that’s much smaller in proportion to the Earth. Unfortunately, NASA hasn’t released much details about how this image was created (other than saying it was built from “a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface”).
Some people have suggested that North America looks so big because the satellite that took these photos is in such a low orbit (about 800km), whereas most of those classic “blue marble” images were taken from 40,000 km away from Earth. This makes sense, but then I’m confused by this image released in December:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76674
In that image, it looks like every continent is the correct size.
I’ll keep doing some research on this, and post anything else I find out
Despite the size discrepancy of North America, the photo looks amazing! These blue marble type photos always make me reflect on how delicate our planet really is in the grand scheme of things. Thanks for posting it, Steve.