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North America from low orbiting satellite Suomi NPP
NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
2012-01-04
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2159.html; SEE Also => http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=9643 AND http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Earth
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
About this work
A view of most of North America taken from a low orbit of about 826 km altitude. The whole hemisphere is not visible owing to the low orbit, and the horizon is at a distance of about 3,300 km, while the radius of the planet is 6,371 km. The diameter seen from this height is about 125 degrees. An image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's Earth-observing research satellite, Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on 4 January 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on 24 January 2012 to honour the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin. Suomi NPP carries five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.
