Last week, we saw new photos of the Earth at night from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Google announced today in a Google+ post that there is a new layer in Google Maps, which lets you explore the imagery. You can do so at Google’s Earth Builder site, where Google says:

This new global view and animation of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth’s land surface and islands. This new data was then mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. Data provided by NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA NGDC

Here’s a video NASA put out: