NASA Black Marble sources

[cc_spicuous_2]

This is for the wallpaper artists, the NASA Black Marble images exist

• https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5276/ and
• https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5313/,

each animation has a drop-down menu to the download button with still-image links or links to entire directories.

Nerdy discussions and science details

• Black Marble Data and Statistics, (n.d.) https://worldbank.github.io/blackmarbler/ [accessed 6 May 2026]
• NASA Video, NASA ARSET: Black Marble Background, Use, and Applications, Part 1/1 (2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSxlhBLOAc4 [accessed 6 May 2026]
• Román, Miguel O., and others, ‘NASA’s Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suite’, Remote Sensing of Environment, 210 (2018), pp. 113–43, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2018.03.017
• Yohan, ‘Not All Nightlight Datasets Are the Same: Introducing NASA’s Black Marble Dataset’, n.d. https://www.spatialedge.co/p/not-all-nightlight-datasets-are-the [accessed 6 May 2026]

[drunkenvicar]

the last Yohan source you linked was fascinating about this new kind of luminosity mapping (“black marble”) and how/why they do it.

Colorado School of Mines is such a niche college out West—I was shocked they were up to their eyeballs helping to build this. More mp4’s than wallpaper at those 2 links but it’s a download start .

It seems it’s the angle of the image to me…but just exploring. Thank you for the groovy distraction!