City lights from satellite

[SLO]

Amazing images





This image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s surface.

The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centers. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region.

Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there. Deserts in Africa, Arabia, Australia, Mongolia, and the United States are poorly lit as well (except along the coast), along with the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, and the great mountains of the Himalaya.

Credits: Images courtesy of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/...th_lights.html

[BamaGrad04]

Still quiet in Northern Africa, I see.

[SLO]

Yeah, Greenland too.

I think its cool you can make out highways. One comment I saw on the web site was how North Korea was dark. If you look at the map, South Korea looks like an island. I saw a blown up version of asia and it was amazing how you saw this void that was North Korea. Communism doesnt pay the electric bill...

[Grumpy]

Africa is still the black continent here

[KingKrunch]

I have a poster of the first picture on my wall

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

Africa is still the black continent here

Um, that would be the "Dark Continent..."

[vid]

There was one in National Geographic in 2004 that shows the world from space, and aside from city lights, it also shows fishing boats, oil and gas fields and forest fires. It's pretty neat. The other side is a political map and has insets of population densities and language families. It's very nice.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by SLO

Yeah, Greenland too.

I think its cool you can make out highways.

Yep. In Texas I can see I-10, I-20, I-35, I-45, and I-40 (Route 66).

[Deepstar]

Thanks for posting those. It's interesting how you can see the various interstate highways from space. cool.

[Cypherus]

Amazing pictures. There is still so much available space on earth - we are definitely not over-crowded (albiet in Urban Centres). The darkland, so to speak, is really the result of little to zero economics.

[BTinSF]

^^^Unless, of course, you want to eat. Lots of those dark areas are where much of our food comes from. Not everything can be paved over and lit up.

[Thundertubs]

Look at northern Maine! It's pitch black, even though the Canada surrounding it has lights.

[Complex01]

Kewl photo. I always find the night lights the best...

[louisville_sky]

That is wild how you can follow interstates between cities. Awesome photo.

[sakyle04]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

Africa is still the black continent here

Ya, being in Africa (spending significant time in both South Africa and Kenya), it is no surprise to see such darkness.

Even in Johannesburg (a city of maybe 10 million, where I live) you can see copious amounts of stars at night. It is really bizarre. Throw in the amount of power outages and even this industrialized country is often in the dark.

The interior of Africa is a whole other story. I have spent many nights in areas that are maybe an hour from major cities and there are no lights because the power lines don't reach into even exurban areas.

Imagine living in Plano (Dallas suburb) and not having electricity. Or maybe you are in suburban New Jersey and you can see the lights of the city on the horizon but you have no access yourself.

The dark continent. Indeed.

[brickell]

Originally Posted by louisville_sky

That is wild how you can follow interstates between cities. Awesome photo.

maybe I'm wrong but I assumed they were cities along the old Federal routes, not interstates per se. It just turns out that interstates parallel many of those.

[ColDayMan]

^That sounds more likely.

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by Cypherus

Amazing pictures. There is still so much available space on earth - we are definitely not over-crowded (albiet in Urban Centres). The darkland, so to speak, is really the result of little to zero economics.

I beg to differ. The population of the world is approaching the carrying capacity with which the earth can accommodate us.
What people forget is the dark places aren't uninhabited by choice - it's because they can't be.
Look at Australia - it's population is heavily concentrated on the eastern coastline, because a huge chunk of the country is either desert or bush.
It's the same in South America - the Amazon basin restricts the population northwest and south of it; northern Africa, most of Russia, northern Canada. The list is huge.

Inter-woven with the light bits are areas where we grow crops and food, graze animals and get our resources from.

You'd be hard pushed to find a physically inhabitable location that hasn't been settled by humans in some way.
That is going to be an increasingly major problem, as the population of the world increases exponentially, and shows no sign of slowing.

[Spocket]

^That's true but many people also tend to forget that there are still plenty of underpopulated areas. Canada is a prime example. It's the distribution of the population that is part of the problem. The biggest concern really is with India now that China has managed to get their population growth under control. It actually looks like China might be seeing a decline within fifty years. Unfortunately India is going in the opposite direction and is expected to hit nearly two billion people within a century. That picture tells quite the story though because given the number of people you'd expect India to look like one giant glowing mass. Without a significant acceleration of economic growth and reasonable wealth redistribution India is going to become a powder keg.

[bigd]

Here is a world density map from 1994: