Start Date: End Date: Published Date Data Date
Data acquired 2012 3600 x 1800 352 KB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 3600 x 1800 833 KB - GeoTIFF
Data acquired 2012 13500 x 6750 3 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 13500 x 6750 7 MB - GeoTIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 6 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 21 MB - TIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 2 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 9 MB - TIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 7 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 25 MB - TIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 5 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 19 MB - TIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 15 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 45 MB - TIFF
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 3 MB - JPEG
Data acquired 2012 21600 x 21600 13 MB - TIFF
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