Nasa reveals stunning night photo of Earth – showing USA’s bright lights and the dusky Amazon rainforest

NASA has released a stunning image of the Americas at night – taken from space. The dusky shot of Earth was snapped by a satellite orbiting our home planet in 2012. This exceptional view is normally only seen by astronauts on board the International Space Station. But Nasa made a composite image based on data […]

NASA has released a stunning image of the Americas at night – taken from space.

The dusky shot of Earth was snapped by a satellite orbiting our home planet in 2012.

Nasa

This exceptional view is normally only seen by astronauts on board the International Space Station.

But Nasa made a composite image based on data from the Suomi NPP satellite, captured between April and October 2012.

The USA is brightly lit, showing the large and widespread population across North America.

The lights are more dense towards the East Coast, which reflects the actual population of America.

Nasa

But dawn is also approaching from the east, so New Yorkers will be just a few hours away from the morning.

In South America, the lights are far more sparse, typically running along coastlines.

That’s because the upper central portion of the continent is dominated by the sprawling Amazon rainforest.

Both parts of the image highlight just how striking the light pollution on Earth can be.

Large metropolises are easy to pick out – and their absence is obvious too.

“For nearly 25 years, satellite images of Earth at night have served as a fundamental research tool, while also stoking public curiosity,” explained Nasa’s Yvette Smith.

“The images paint an expansive and revealing picture, showing how humans have illuminated and shaped the planet in profound ways since the invention of the light bulb 140 years ago.”

Nasa

This photo is contained in Nasa’s new ebook ‘Earth at Night’, which includes photos of our planet taken from space.

It was captured using Suomi’s “day-night band” of its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).

The VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared.

It then uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals from Earth.

These include city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires and reflected moonlight.

For this particular image, Nasa removed the auroras, fires and other stay light to emphasise the city lights.

In other news, Nasa recently snapped a stunning view of London at night from the International Space Station.

An ‘impossible’ black hole found in the Milky Way is so big science says it shouldn’t exist.

Nasa has released a puzzling image of a nearly perfect ring galaxy.

And, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites have come under fire once again for ‘interrupting’ footage of a meteor shower.

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