Stardust Musings and Thoughts for the Freethinker: Earth at Night

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Earth at Night

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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.

(A high-resolution digital version of the image is available (click here or here).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: What's interesting is if you look at the Korean peninsula and the surrounding areas of China, Russia and Japan, that North Korea is virtually pitch black at nighttime. In fact, on the map in your post Stardust, South Korea looks like an island because North Korea is so dark.; 9/14/2006 12:26 AM
Stardust said...: tommy- I didn't notice that before you mentioned it about North Korea. They are literally and figuratively "in the dark!" The little tyrant may have nukes, but he can't see to use them! Maybe that is why his test missle went astray? :-) I am glad I was born where I am instead of someplace where the leader starves his people and keeps them in the dark. (Though we are kept in the dark figuratively here sometimes.) It seems really ironic to even want nukes under those conditions. What is he "defending"? Hunger? Starvation? Darkness? Oppression?; 9/14/2006 7:45 AM
MAX WELL said...: This is amazing... but also a little freeking.... you can see perfectly how the virus has invaded the hole cel (metaphorical)
Don't you think? and I am not trying to be a Doomy; 9/16/2006 1:16 PM
MAX WELL said...: Maybe darkness is much more peacefully and nature sinchronized... at last, night is dark... and is better for a good rest...

What I mean... electric industry not always means LIGHT as the way of progress and evolution.

Beatiful, Stardust... keep on going; 9/16/2006 1:20 PM