Nasa reveals second stunning hi-def \'Blue Marble\'

The new image was composed from six passes of Nasa's latest Suomi NPP satellite Nasa's 'Blue Marble' images of our world started in 1972, when Apollo astronauts took an image of our world from 28,000 miles away, looking like a blue marble in space. Since then, the space agency has used the term for spectacular hi-def images of our planet created from satellite imagery and often released once a year.
Two weeeks ago, Nasa unveiled a new 'Blue Marble,  taken by a hi-tech instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. It was so popular that the agency released a second image today - covering the parts of the 'marble' the first left out.
The new image is a composite of six separate orbits taken on January 23, 2012 by the Suomi NPP satellite.
Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important  is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS, a scanning radiometer, which collects visible and infrared imagery and measurements of the land, atmosphere and oceans.
Compiled by Nasa scientist Norman Kuring, the image has the perspective of a viewer looking down from 7,918 miles  above the Earth's surface. The four vertical lines of 'haze' visible in this image shows the reflection of sunlight off the ocean.
The satellite was renamed the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as the father of satellite meteorology.
Last year's image was taken by a space camera onboard the Nasa satellite Terra, which is orbiting 435miles above the Earth's surface.