Some calm and perspective in this intense political season. Robert T. Gonzalez explains how NASA made its newest awe-inspiring photo of Earth, "Blue Marble 2012:"
The camera on board [new satellite] Suomi NPP can only photograph small sections of Earth at a time, so the image you see here is actually something of a mosaic — a patchwork piece that collects photos taken from Suomi NPP over the course of January 4, 2012 and stitches them together. Of course, when I say that Suomi photographs "small sections" of the Earth's surface, what I mean is that they're smaller than an absurdly hi-res photo of the entire planet; in actuality, they're still mind-numbingly enormous — like the true-color image of the Southeastern United States featured here.
Go here for a comparison of the image to the previous "Blue Marbles," including the 1972 original.
The Dish 