Earthlights

Our little planet, seen at night from far above as the Shuttle astronauts would have seen it...courtesy of NASA.

"View from the space station. The image is a panoramic view of the world from the new space station. It is a night photo with the lights clearly indicating the populated areas. You can scroll East-West and North-South. Note that Canada's population is almost exclusively along the US border. Moving east to Europe, there is a high population concentration along the Mediterranean Coast. It's easy to spot London, Paris, Stockholm and Vienna. Note the Nile River and the rest of the "Dark Continent." After the Nile, the lights don't come on again until Johannesburg. Look at the Australian Outback and the Trans-Siberian Rail Route. Moving east, the most striking observation is the difference between north and South Korea. Note the density of Japan. What a piece of photography. It is an absolutely awesome picture of the Earth taken from the Boeing built (go Lockheed!) Space Station, in November on a perfect night with no obscuring atmospheric conditions."

Author unknown, from an e-mail I was forwarded today. Funny how different things look from a distance...and how similar. My only question is, how did they take this photograph of a 360-degree view of the planet with the entire surface in darkness? Certainly at any given time, only half the planet is dark, and the other half illuminated by the sun?

Strange. Maybe it's a computer-generated composite of multiple nighttime images? Any thoughts?

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