Astronomy Picture of the Day 3-24-03

NASA ^ | 3-24-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 March 24

A Digital Sunset Over Europe and Africa
Credit: NASA; Copyright: The Living Earth, Inc.; Used with Permission

Explanation: No single spacecraft or astronaut took this picture. It is a digital composite of archived images taken over many orbits by several Earth-orbiting satellites. Similar images can be digitally stitched together for any Earth location by John Walker's Earth and Moon Viewer website. Specifically, the daytime images were taken by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, while the nighttime images were taken by the DMSP satellites. This image is different from what an astronaut would see for reasons including a complete lack of clouds and an unrealistic exaggeration of lights and contrasts. The image has become both an internet soliton in that it continues to circulate as an attachment to digital correspondence, and a modern urban legend. Another image like that is Earth at Night. The reason for the image's continued popularity might be simple: it is really cool looking.

[petuniasevan]

HERE is that image that Rush put up on his website some time back. It is NOT from the space shuttle of course. It's a composite of various types of satellite imagery. Please ping interested parties to this thread.

Good morning.

[petuniasevan]

[firewalk]

Good morning...bttt

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Another urban legend bites the dust! Great pic, though...

[petuniasevan]

Remember that so-called shuttle photo you posted on March 5th?

Here's the real deal. Ping your friends!

Original thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/857160/posts

[Soaring Feather]

Thank you.

[mikrofon]

Thanks for helping clear up the misconceptions on this 'legendary' photo...

The Living Earth site is an interesting one to visit, and has also been instructional in showing how the earth-sun relationship changes over the course of a year. I did break a smile at the recent disclaimer on their main page re: frequent refreshes of the maps by folks trying to catch "live action" in the Middle East.

[Freedom2specul8]

This is pretty cool! Thanks!

[Joan912]

pretty cool!

[sistergoldenhair]

Interesting. Thanks for the ping.