It kinda shows the dominance humans have over the planet. We affect nearly every part of it. Nearly everything is light up by our lights.
To the point where it’s visible from space. From space, it’s as if we have altered all of the night’s topography.
TauZero@mander.xyz 1 year ago
The picture is clearly at the very least a composite, because there are zero clouds anywhere. I was skeptical whether it can be called a “photo”. Given how clear the unlit terrain is, even in the ocean around the Bahamas for example, I thought it must have been a visualization, or a photo of daytime terrain shaded blue and overlaid with a map of nighttime lights. But I found the actual source:
…nasa.gov/…/night-lights-2012-map
…nasa.gov/…/dnb_land_ocean_ice.2012.13500x13500.B…
It really is a (composite) photo taken by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, whose cameras are so sensitive they can see reflected moonlight and “the nocturnal glow produced by Earth’s atmosphere”, albeit partially in the infrared.
I’m unsure though what “assembled from data” means exactly. At the very least the colors are artificial, shifted from the infrared-to-green range of the camera into human visual range. This page describes some more how the sensor functions, along with raw photos:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/IntotheBlack