Black Marble

Just recently, NASA scientists unveiled a global composite image of our planet at night, using cloud-free technology to really highlight the glow of natural and human-built light. We've seen pictures like this before---but every one of them was only focused on Earth during the day, when the planet can be observed while fully illuminated by the sun. Thanks to the new sensor equipped on the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite that launched last year, we're able to see our planet in a way we've never seen before.