New satellite photo of the Earth

The Earth has a new portrait thanks to a Russian weather satellite.

The photo, taken by Elektro-L No. 1, is the highest resolution image of the planet. It is a single shot, unlike the NASA photo of the Earth dubbed the "Blue Marble" that Gizmodo stated came from many different photographs.

Elektro L's image is reported to be more than 121 megapixels in size.

Roscosmos or the Russian Federal Space Agency launched the satellite on Jan. 20, 2011. It entered a geostationary orbit more than 21,747 miles above the Earth.

It takes an high resolution image of the Earth every half hour, which is downloaded to NTs OMZ, the Russian Earth observation center.

The Huffington Post , which features a zoomable image, reported that it uses four different wavelengths of light to capture the images. The orange seen on the planet represents vegetation.

Robert Simmon, a scientist at the NASA Earth Observatory Goddard Space Flight Center, told Gizmodo that the wavelengths include a near-infrared wavelength not used by NASA's GOES satellites.

Because of that, he said, the Elektro-L images "show the Earth in a way not visible to human eyes."

"They're not any better or worse than NASA images, but they show different things," he said.