AUGUST 22, 2004
Earth at Night
EXPLANATION
This is what the
Earth
looks like at night.
Can you find your favorite
country or
city?
Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible.
Human-made
lights highlight particularly developed or
populated areas of the Earth’s surface,
including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern
United States, and
Japan.
Many large cities are located near
rivers or
oceans
so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat.
Particularly
dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and
Australia.
The above image is actually a composite of
hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting
DMSP satellites.
(Editor’s note: This image has become an email-attachment phenomenon! It has also generated many print requests. Unfortunately, we do not sell prints. However, a high-resolution digital version of the image is available (click here
or here).
Credit
C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/ NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive
