Composite Of Earth At Night

crmartin writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Earth from space at night. Actually a composite from many pictures from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP), it's like a skeletal view of the Earth in tiny lights. If you really like it, there are hi-res images up to a 40 megabyte TIFF."

Comments

new?

[Speare]

These have been going around for a long time, and people have worked with different resolutions and different intensity gains. The most common images composite the lights onto images showing a gamut of ocean-depths because the shades of blue are informative, if not realistic. Any newer, higher-resolution version is only mildly interesting.

By the way, the XPlanet project (xplanet.sf.net) can use images like this for the night-side rendering of a near-realtime Earth on your desktop.

Picture of the..

[Anonymous Coward]

August 11 2002. That's what it says, when you click the image for the larger image (bottom left corner).

Also of interest

[Bob The Lizard]

Check out
http://www.dfd.dlr.de
The German Remote Sensing Data Center. DFD

These guys process sat data etc. Some cool pics here.

English link at top.
Go to sat data on left, then gallery.

G/

Repeat, But Lighter

[Flamesplash]

Looks like they decided to repeat this imagine on APOD, it was last up Nov 2000. They decided to lighten the image a little, I guess the last one was too dark.

I was able to buy a poster size version from my campus poster sale last year, I'm a big fan.

Re:River Nile and east-russian (rail)road

[laurensv]

The lines going through eastern Russia (most likely not Russia anymore, but I'm not up to date with the current *stans there), are they based on roads or railroads?
Yes, the line matches for a big part with the trans siberian railway. You can also notices how Moskou is the centre of a star, Paris has a bit of the same effect in France (both very centralised governments).

Re:River Nile and east-russian (rail)road

[markov_chain]

As far as Russia goes, that's probably the Trans-Siberia Railway. Amazing how development follows transportation routes, right? Reminds me of playing Railroad Tycoon or SimCity :)

Re:Had it on my desktop,...

[gbjbaanb]

you want xearth (or wearth). It makes a desktop wallpaper image that is updated every x seconds. And you can have the light/dark barrier displayed, and it moves, and the earth even wobbles up and down depending on the season.

Unfortunately you can't see the lights coming on and off... unless you download the source and get coding :)

Re: Heeeyyyy!

[daniil]

These lights represent larger settlements, as smaller ones (like villages) don't simply generate enough light to be seen on this picture. Larger settlements are always situated by major transportation routes -- like railways, highways or waterways (see the coastlines practically anywhere in the world).

Now, taking this into consideration, the photo will yield more information. You can, for instance, quite clearly trace the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway (the narrow strip of lights running through most of Russia). In the US, the Western part was settled (by the Europeans, that is) much later than the Eastern part; as a consequence, the transportation infrastructure is less developed and it really shows (there are probably also differences in the landscape -- a city is more likely to be built in the plains that in the Great Rocky Mountains).

McDonald Observatory

[grouse]

Well, there are two reasons. One is that the McDonald Observatory, and the largest telescope in the continental U.S. is out there, and their Light Pollution Program has successfully reduced stray light for hundreds of miles.

The other reason is that there just ain't that much stuff out in West Texas. ;-)

Re:Drive from London to Singapore?

[ArsSineArtificio]

Possibly the route of the Orient Express? I'd guess that populated areas grew up alongside the railway.

The "Orient Express" was a luxury train which ran from Paris to Istanbul. What you've identified is the great Trans-Siberian Railway, leading from western Russia all the way to Vladivostok. It was indeed the corridor for Russian settlement in Siberia.

Re:2002?

[Tmack]

I wouldnt doubt it, the one Ive had as a desktop background for a while now is dated Nov27, 2000. The type of image is nothing new, but it could be using newer images than the one I have.... Another interesting image is the one of a sunset over europe.

Tm

Re:Michael!

[_anomaly_]

It's gotta be a typo... the page of hi-res images lists a 4mb tiff image that is described as "full-res".
If there were a 40mb tiff would that be a "10x full-res" image?