The world looks stunning in new photographs released by NASA

NASA just released some stunning night-time photographs of the Earth. 'Night lights' as they are called offer a composite view of human settlement patterns across the planet. And India (above pic) looks beautiful. SEE ALSO: NASA's TRAPPIST-1 discoveries were predicted by a video game And so does the land of America. Composite image of the US during night.Image: NASAAnd the whole wide world. Composite image of the world during night.Image: NASAThese images are the result of data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. According to NASA, VIIRS is the first satellite instrument to make quantitative measurements of light emissions and reflections, which allows researchers to distinguish the intensity, types and the sources of night lights over several years. Scientists reckon that these images can be used "to monitor short-term changes caused by disturbances in power delivery, such as conflict, storms, earthquakes and brownouts." Armed with more accurate night-time environmental products, NASA is now automating the processing so that users will be able to view night-time imagery within hours of being captured. The latest images eliminate light from the moon, which varies the amount of light shining on the Earth. The NASA team is said to have written code that picked the clearest night views each month, eventually collating moonlight-free and moonlight-corrected data.And the results are mesmerizing! WATCH: NASA's origami-inspired robot can operate on Mars-like surfaces
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