At 19.06 gigapixels, "The Long Swath” is far from the highest resolution panorama on record, falling well short of the 320 gigapixel panorama of London, but it is without question the longest, covering an area from northern Russia to South Africa.

 

Revealing the immense diversity of climates on our planet's surface, the composite image is made up of 56 still images taken during the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LCDM) satellite's orbit on April 19, 2013.

Strategically photographed so as not to contain large areas of boring water, the resolution is between 15 and 100 meters depending on the light band used. NASA’s LDCM scanned the surface of the Earth while traveling at over 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 km/h), which allowed it to take the shots in just 20 minutes.