Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

3600 x 1800
352 KB - JPEG

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3600 x 1800
833 KB - GeoTIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

13500 x 6750
3 MB - JPEG

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13500 x 6750
7 MB - GeoTIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
6 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
21 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
2 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
9 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
7 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
25 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
5 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
19 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
15 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
45 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
3 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
13 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
7 MB - JPEG

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related tiff image preview placeholder

21600 x 21600
25 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2 - related image preview

21600 x 21600
3 MB - JPEG

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21600 x 21600
13 MB - TIFF

Earth at Night (Black Marble) 2012 Grayscale Maps v2

Satellite images of Earth at night—often referred to as “night lights”—have been a curiosity for the public and a tool of fundamental research for at least 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness. Produced every decade or so, such maps have spawned hundreds of pop-culture uses and dozens of economic, social science, and environmental research projects.

These images show Earth’s night lights as observed in 2012 and represent a second version of the Black Marble produced with 2012 data. The data were reprocessed with new compositing techniques that select the best cloud-free nights in each month over each land mass.

The images are available as JPEG and GeoTIFF, in three different resolutions: 0.1 degrees (3600x1800), 3km (13500x6750), and 500m (86400x43200). The 500m global map is divided into tiles (21600x21600) according to a gridding scheme.

Read more about these data and the processing used to produce the imagery:


NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data from Miguel Román, NASA GSFC.

Published May 16, 2019
Data acquired 2012

Source:
Suomi NPP > VIIRS
Collection:
Earth at Night