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*MUST CREDIT: NASA EO/Rex Features* Mandatory Credit: Photo by NASA / Rex Features (2015361c) Black Marble, an unprecedented new look at our planet at night - 05 Dec 2012 Scientists unveiled on Wednesday (5 Dec) an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, dubbed Black Marble in reference to previous daytime Blue Marble images, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before. Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the sun. With a new sensor aboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year, scientists now can observe Earth's atmosphere and surface during nighttime hours. The new sensor, the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), is sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal glow produced by Earth's atmosphere and the light from a single ship in the sea. Satellites in the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program have been making observations with low-light sensors for 40 years. But the VIIRS day-night band can better detect and resolve Earth's night lights. The new, higher resolution composite image of Earth at night was released at a news conference at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. This and other VIIRS day-night band images are providing researchers with valuable data for a wide variety of previously unseen or poorly seen events. Another view of the Earth at night, dubbed City Lights, Flat Map, is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012. It... For more information visit http://www.rexfeatures.com/stacklink/CENLTTXSL