Earth at Night
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2022 February 13
Image Credit: NASA, Suomi NPP VIIRS; Data: Miguel Román (NASA GSFC); Processing: Joshua Stevens
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 featured image, nicknamed Black Marble, is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures remade in 2016 from data taken by the orbiting Suomi NPP satellite.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman
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