![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20081018225924im_/http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov//12106/image3_web.thumb.png)
Images & Animations
-
Credit
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Earth at Night
The Lights of Earth: Full Spin
The influence humans have had on their planet can be seen from space. Viewing Earth at night, we see the lights of countless villages, towns, and cities. Fires from slash-and-burn farming and the burn-off of natural gas in oil fields appear in red and yellow. This perspective unveils the breadth of human activity on Earth. It spans the globe.
The Lights of Earth can be seen from space. 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 Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) currently operates four satellites carrying the Operational Linescan System (OLS) in low-altitude polar orbits. Three of these satellites record nighttime data. The DMSP-OLS has a unique capability to detect low levels of visible-near infrared (VNIR) radiance at night. With the OLS 'VIS' band data it is possible to detect clouds illuminated by moonlight, plus lights from cities, towns, industrial sites, gas flares, and ephemeral events such as fires and lightning-illuminated clouds. The Nighttime Lights of the World data set is compiled from the October 1994 - March 1995 DMSP nighttime data collected when moonlight was low. Using the OLS thermal infrared band, areas containing clouds were removed and the remaining area used in the time series.
The Nighttime Lights of the World data set is compiled from the October 1994 - March 1995 DMSP nighttime data collected when moonlight was low. Using the OLS thermal infrared band, areas containing clouds were removed and the remaining area used in the time series.
Metadata
-
Sensor
DMSP/OLS -
Animation ID
2397 -
Video ID
SVS2002-0009 -
Start Timecode
01:06:54:00 -
End Timecode
01:08:02:12 -
Animator
Stuart A. Snodgrass, Robert Simmon, Craig Mayhew -
Studio
SVS -
Visualization Date
2002/03/06 -
Scientist
Marc Imhoff (NASA/GSFC), Christopher Elvidge (NOAA/NGDC) -
Datasets
Earth at Night -
Keywords
Night, Fires, Lights -
DLESE Subject
Human geography -
Data Date
1994/10 - 1995/03 -
Pao ID
G01-074 Similar -
Story URL
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?5826 -
Animation Type
Regular