This New Video of the Earth Is the Best Ever Made
The video was made with images taken by a Russian satellite
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James Tyrwhitt-Drake, a graduate student studying advanced microscopy at the University of Victoria, just posted a YouTube video of the Earth seen from outer space. This isn't just any Google Earth-caliber depiction, however. It's hailed as the most accurate and detailed video of the Earth ever made, Sploid reports.
Tyrwhitt-Drake created the video by compiling images taken by a Russian satellite called the Elektro-L. The Elektro-L is a weather satellite that takes an image of the planet in 4K resolution every 30 minutes, Sploid writes. The resulting video has a resolution of 3840 x 2160. An even higher resolution version is available by request.
One thing that is conspicuously missing from the video is, well, us. There are no traces of city lights. As Tyrwhitt-Drake explains in his video caption, however, that's normal: "City lights are not visible because they are thousands of times less bright than the reflection of sunlight off the Earth. If the camera was sensitive enough to detect city lights, the Earth would be overexposed."
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