Planet Earth Photographed In One Shot By Russian Satellite Electro-L (PICTURES, VIDEO)

Huffington Post UK  |  By Posted: 11/05/2012 14:59 Updated: 14/05/2012 15:20

This magnificent image is a portrait of the Earth taken in one single shot.

At 121 megapixels, it is the highest resolution image of the planet ever and was taken by the geostationary Russian weather satellite the Electro-L.

The satellite, which was launched in January last year, takes a high resolution image of the full disk of the Earth every 30 minutes. The images are taken in four different wavelengths of light, on infrared and four visible.

In these images, the infrared appears orange and indicates vegetation.

Scroll down for more images and a time-lapse video of the images
earth one shot nts omz

The images are downloaded to NTs OMZ, the Russian Earth Observation centre.

Portraits of planet Earth as provided by agencies such as Nasa are typically created by the stitching together of several images.

But as Nasa Earth Observatory scientist Robert Simmon points out to Gizmodo, the images are: "Not any better or worse than Nasa images, but they show different things."

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He added the Elektro-L is similar to their GOES satellites in that: "It's a geostationary weather satellite orbiting above the equator at ~54˚East.

"The US has two similar operational geostationary satellites over the east and west coasts, EUMETSAT has one over Europe and one over the Indian Ocean, Japan has one over the far western Pacific."

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Click below to watch a time-lapse video of the images
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This magnificent image is a portrait of the Earth taken in one single shot. At 121 megapixels, it is the highest resolution image of the planet ever and was taken by the geostationary Russian weat...
This magnificent image is a portrait of the Earth taken in one single shot. At 121 megapixels, it is the highest resolution image of the planet ever and was taken by the geostationary Russian weat...
 
 
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09:35 PM on 05/14/2012
Love it,but where is the street light glow when it turns to night?
06:30 PM on 05/13/2012
WOW stunning photography-out of this world.
10:56 AM on 05/13/2012
What a beautiful planet. Pity human beings rule it.
08:21 PM on 05/13/2012
They only think they do - when they are all dust , bacteria will colonise it completely
09:36 AM on 05/22/2012
Bacteria, unlike the virus [humans] that colonise it now!

The Earth is a beautiful planet, spoiled by man and his greed!
01:41 PM on 05/24/2012
Interesting paradox. Beauty is a perception of man, with no humans there is no gauge of beauty.
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fredro
01:41 PM on 05/12/2012
Until I noticed the clouds moving, like the weird experience of seeing live people and vehicles moving across the screen of a camera oscura, I thought it was a trick, phtographs of light being shone on, then off, an artificial globe. But the clouds would be very difficult, if not impossible to simulate....
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Mike Dennison
03:39 PM on 05/11/2012
2 minutes into the movie, the Sun goes out.
photo
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Ramon Moreno
Read below.
08:32 PM on 05/12/2012
The sun doesn't go out.
photo
Totto
"Not 'Noise' One Round: *Music*
03:06 PM on 05/13/2012
Not yet, it doesn't.