Black is the new blue for super-chic planet Earth

No, that's not a CGI Earth for a sci-fi flick — that's a pic of our blue planet assembled from cloud-free snaps taken by the Suomi spacecraft. This image, nicknamed the Black Marble, gets its eerily clear look using a VIIRS instrument, aka Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, and the instrument's incredible sensitivity means it can capture our city lights even in near total darkness from about 500 miles above. Launched to help monitor weather, the technology springs from the brains at NOAA and NASA, and unlike that camera in your pocket, this gizmo continuously scans a scene and then evaluates and adjusts it pixel by pixel. [Source]

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