NASA last week unveiled the 2012 edition of its celebrated “Blue Marble” image. By making use of Suomi NPP, a planet-pointing satellite, the American space agency made an enormously high-resolution snap of the watery world of our planet Earth.

The images focused on the western hemisphere, while various regions of North and Central America were especially highlighted. In no time after its release on Flickr, the famous online photo-sharing service, the image went viral. On Flickr, the Blue Marble got even more visits than the utterly famous and trademark “Situation Room” image, which was captured when the Al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated.

Soon after its release, public started demanding some more such images. As a result of a whale of request received by NASA, the space agency has now made a companion picture: this time the focus of the lens is toward the East and the image thus formed showcase Africa, Saudi Arabia as well as the Indian Subcontinent.

The Suomi NPP satellite embraces the planet very closely for capturing such out-of-this-world images and illustrations in one shot. It’s is reportedly placed in a polar orbit having an altitude of around 824km, though the outlook of the “Blue Marble” Eastern hemisphere is roughly from 12,743km apart.

Earlier on January 23, Norman Kuring, a NASA Goddard oceanographer, effectively made use of the images from as many as six different orbits of the Suomi NPP satellite over a short time period of just eight hours. He later joined the images with the intent of achieving the final combination.

While expressing their comments regarding the recently released image, NASA officials said they will soon be putting out yet another image of the Earth by making use of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) installed on Suomi.