You’ve heard of the “Blue Marble”, that is, the majestic view of the earth from outer space.  Well, here is the “Black Marble”, the view of earth from the dark side.

From NASA:

This new global view and animation of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) 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 to provide a realistic view of the planet.

Enjoy!