NASA's Global Selfie Released: LOOK at the 3.2 Gigapixel Earth Day - Inspired Mosaic
ByIn the midst of the "selfie" phenomenon, NASA has decided to take the self-portrait craze to the global level.
According to NBC New York, the space agency asked the general public to take a selfie and explain where in the world they were on April 22. Users could either leave a comment with the photo, but some held up a sign answering the question, "Where are you on Earth Right Now?"
A month later, NASA has released a massive "Global Selfie" mosaic made up of 36,422 selfie submissions from 113 countries on online mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Flickr. On GigaPan, users can zoom in on the 3.2 gigapixel mosaic, which shows both sides of the globe, far enough to see each individual slefie. NASA reportedly sifted through more than 50,000 submissions.
The "Global Selfie" is similar to another project conducted by NASA earlier this year, the "Wave at Saturn" mosaic, in which NASA asked the general public to photograph themselves literally waving at the sky toward Saturn. NASA gave users a specific to take the photo because, at that time, the Cassini spacecraft took a photo of Earth from behind Saturn.
The "Global Selfie" is part of an environmental campaign and the mosaic was meant to capture what the Earth looked like on Earth Day, 2014.
"The year 2014 is a significant one for NASA Earth science. For the first time in more than a decade, five missions designed to gather critical data about our home planet are launching to space in a single year. The first, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission's Core Observatory, launched in February," the space agency said in a press release. "Next up is the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), launching from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on July 1.
"NASA scientists have helped identify thousands of new planets in recent years, but the space agency studies no planet more closely than our own. With 17 Earth-observing satellites in orbit, bolstered by ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns, NASA data helps scientists piece together a clearer picture of Earth's atmosphere, land and ocean."