A Satellite Map Capable of Erasing All the World's Clouds

The world is a surprisingly cloudy place when you step back and view it from space, sharing the vantage point of satellites. But while pictures like the one below have a beauty in their own right, they're particularly problematic for map-makers more interested in the obscured details of the earth's surface than its atmosphere:

That picture is a composite of images taken just last week by a pair of NASA satellites that each circle the globe twice a day. Data from such sources are used to create the satellite base layer for many maps, and so, as you can imagine, clouds easily get in the way. Whole regions of the world around the earth's midriff – in the "intertropical convergence zone" where northern and southern hemisphere weather patterns meet and mix – may be visible for only a few clear weeks in a year.