Two satellites’ data provide a breath-taking cloudless view of Earth, complete with an astonishing 80 trillion pixels.
The mosaic of photos was captured by the Sentinel-2 satellites, which are operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and consist of two spacecraft: Sentinel-2A (launched on June 23, 2015) and Sentinel-2b (March 7, 2017). The two satellites are orbiting at a height of around 790 kilometres (490 miles). EOX, a German mapping company, pieced the mosaic together.
To ensure that the mosaic was cloud-free, the photos for each region were captured at various times. They were collected between May and September 2016 in the Northern Hemisphere, and from November 2016 to March 2017 in the Southern Hemisphere. From May 2016 to April 2017, the tropical regions are depicted.
“To have a visually appealing mosaic, it is desired to show the Earth during summer, when vegetation reaches its annual peak,” explained Joachim Ungar, Lead Cartographer at EOX, in a blog post.
The team used 250 terabytes of data from the Sentinel-2 satellites to put the mosaic together. They now hope to get greater cover over Asia and the Americas thanks to the launch of Sentinel-2b.
Check out some of the stunning images from the mosaic below, and view a full scrollable version right here.
