https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/blue-marble-2012/
How about this then...
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/blue-marble-2012/
A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.
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See, that wasn’t so hard. Now I can discuss differences in the two images. The bottom image (2015) was the sunlit side of the Earth from one million miles away, taken by the Deep Space Climate Observatory.
The top image (2012) was a mosaic of several swaths taken by the Suomi NPP satellite from 511 miles away. [1] I had guessed in an earlier post that the top image was from a polar orbiter. The bottom image looks “doctored” because of the lower orbit which makes continents appear larger compared with an image taken from one million miles away.
Polar orbiters are sun-synchronous meaning that they orbit the Earth from pole-to-pole using Earth’s rotation to keep the Sun in the same position relative to the imager. Each orbit images a 25 degree swath and the swaths are digitally stitched together to obtain a mosaic. With the NOAA polar orbiters, there are two satellites, one for morning and one for evening. I have observed many orbiters in the night sky headed to the north. The ISS is pretty neat too.
1. https://eospso.nasa.gov/missions/suomi-national-polar-orbiting-partnership