This new global view and animation of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomi_NPP" class="extiw" title="w:Suomi NPP">Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP)</a> satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012. It took satellite 312 orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth’s land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.
<p>NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center 
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<ul><li>Miguel Román (NASA/GSFC) Scientist</li>
<li>Joshua Stevens (SSAI) Image Processing Animator</li></ul>
<p><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30878">https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30878</a>
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<ul><li>converted form 3840x2160 mpeg-4: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a030000/a030800/a030878/BlackMarble_2016_rotate_2160p.mp4">https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a030000/a030800/a030878/BlackMarble_2016_rotate_2160p.mp4</a></li></ul>