NASA: Global Selfie

On Earth Day this year, NASA asked people all around the world a simple question "Where are you on Earth Right Now?" NASA asked people to answer the question on social media, with a selfie. The goal was to use each picture as a pixel in the creation of a "Global Selfie" a mosaic image that would look like Earth appeared from space on Earth Day. The image was built using 36,422 individual photos that were posted on social media and tagged #globalselfie on or around April 22, 2014. People on every continent 113 countries and regions in all posted selfies. From Antarctica to Yemen, Greenland to Guatemala, Micronesia to the Maldives, Pakistan, Poland, Peru and on. The image was assembled after weeks of curating more than 50,000 #globalselfie submissions – not all were accessible or usable from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. The result is a zoomable 3.2-gigapixel image that people can scan and explore to take a closer look at the variety of pictures. The mosaic is hosted on the Web by GigaPan.