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Space

Composite Of Earth At Night 467

Posted by michael from the wallpaper dept.
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."
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Composite Of Earth At Night More

Composite Of Earth At Night

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  • Michael! (Score:5, Funny)

    by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:24AM (#10043083)
    How could you allow a link to a 40MB file into a /. article? Oh the humanity...

  • hum (Score:5, Insightful)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:25AM (#10043089)
    interestingly, we clearly see northkorea (black) surrounded by light (southkorea and china)

    • Scotland is pretty cool (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:35AM (#10043165) Homepage
      You can see a lot of light around the "M8 corridor", about half-way up running east-west, and then light where there are large ports up the east coast and along the south side of the Moray Firth. The black bit in the middle is all mountains and moorland. It looks very, very isolated like that...

    • Also kind of cool... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:41AM (#10043203) Homepage
      Check out the Nile and the coastline of Europe.
    • Kim Jong Il was rummaging in the fridge when the picture was taken.

    • Re:hum (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fishing ( 206255 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:58AM (#10043336)
      There's a really good reason for this.

      After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the buddy-buddy relationships with other communist countries were scratched and it turned into "every man for themselves".

      North Korea used to have a constant supply of oil and coal and other energy needs from Russia, but this was abruptly terminated when Russia started saying "Er, you gotta pay full price now". The North Koreans had no cash to pay with, and thus began the rapid spiralling decline of all their energy production, transport, manufacturing and most importantly, food production. Food production in particular was a double-edged sword, needing not only oil to harvest and transport food, but also petroleum products and energy to produce fertiliser for use in North Korea's poor soil. With most of the country starving, and most machinery lying idle and rusting, things have been getting exponentially worse. They now have peasants tilling fields by hand, emaciated, underfed, with no chance of anything changing, unless they join the army, where they are emaciated, underfed and using rifles.

      With little or nothing to trade with, North Korea has resorted to high-profit, (relatively) low-staffing-requirements industries like missiles, nuclear power and weapons, and (possibly) any other sorts of chemical or bio weapons to fund their dismal little empire.

      Thus we now have them in a position where they have nothing to lose, and a little bitter and twisted.

      To the US's credit, there were attempts to try and help Pyongyang out of this dead-end situation, by offering assistance in building reactors that were more efficient and would not produce weapons-grade materials. Unfortunatley, the Clinton administration never came good with their promises, and then the Bush administration came into power and... well, you know the rest. With the likes of John "Deputy Dawg" Bolton doing negotiations with them it's a small miracle South Korea or Japan aren't small burning heaps by now. That's if NK actually do have any nukes. Who knows... the entire government is crazy and senile, so it's hard to guess what they are doing or thinking.

      • Re:hum (Score:4, Funny)

        by NickFitz ( 5849 ) <slashdot@nickfitz.co . u k> on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:19AM (#10043533) Homepage

        Who knows... the entire government is crazy and senile, so it's hard to guess what they are doing or thinking.

        That's no way to talk about President Bush... oh, hang on...

        • Re:hum (Score:5, Funny)

          by mobiGeek ( 201274 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:21AM (#10044269)
          That's no way to talk about President Bush
          ...the longer you keep calling him "President", the longer he'll keep believing it. ;-)



          Reminds me of something that happened to my father a few years back. He was a high school principal and was giving a tour of the school to some board trustees on a Monday morning. They came around the back of the school where someone had sparypainted "Mr. Smith is gay" on the wall over the weekend.

          Without missing a beat, my father turned to the delegation and said "See that? They do indeed have respect for me...why else would they paint Mr. Smith??"

      • Re:hum (Score:4, Insightful)

        by darth_zeth ( 155639 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @11:25AM (#10045155) Homepage
        You make it sound like North Korea was just dealt a bum hand, and its really not the fault of anyone in North Korea that they are in the shit heap they are in.

        which I find amusing, seeing as RIGHT across the DMZ is the flourishing country of South Korea.

        Whether or not you meant to imply this, I think its worth emphasizing that it is the actions of the North Korea government that has damned the nation. Perhaps the influence of China and the Soviets wasn't quite NK's fault, the past dozen year or so resulted in the marked improvement of many post-Soviet satellite states. The North Koreans government ill management of agricultural resources, ill management of foreign relations, and their massive expenditure of money on their idle million man army, consuming one third of their GDP in supporting their army and developing weapons.

        • Re:hum (Score:3, Insightful)

          by fishing ( 206255 )
          Oh, no, I don't think it's JUST that NK got a bum hand... they could've planned MUCH better. The country is a disaster area and it could've been averted. For an interesting analysis of how North Korea and Cuba both responded to almost identical situations (oil being cut off), and how each went to the complete other end of the spectrum, check out: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111703_ k orea_cuba_1.html

          And, I do think I really was implying that the USA was really trying to help a desperate natio

    • Re:hum (Score:3, Funny)

      by SirStanley ( 95545 )
      The lack of light isn't much of a problem, our missles have GPS.

    • Re:hum (Score:3, Insightful)

      by johnjay ( 230559 )
      Also, can you find India? Western China could be mistaken for ocean.
      It's interesting seeng how bright the Pakistan/India border is, and in comparison the Afghanistan/Pakistan border is undeveloped.
      Anyone who knows more--Why is the north-west region of India darker than the rest? Farmland?

    • earlier versions (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 )
      I have, on my wall, an earlier version, from when I was a kid. Comparing the two is actually sort of scary. On the other hand, it's time to update my earth at night graphics in Celestia [shatters.net]

  • You just seeing this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Backdraft32 ( 806196 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:26AM (#10043094)
    I have had this as my desktop for over a year now... I suppose its nice to show it to more people, but its hardly newsworthy...

  • Alien landing sight... (Score:5, Funny)

    by weave ( 48069 ) * on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:26AM (#10043097) Journal
    OK, if you were an alien, where would you land? Somehow anywhere in the United States seems to be not a very bright idea. Stupid Roswell aliens...
    • In addition to that if you were an alien why on earth would you choose to fly around in the airspace of one of the most paranoid countries on Earth who also has probably the most sophisticated equipment to spot you and then spend your time on the ground cattle rustling and wandering around the farms and bedrooms of dumb hick rednecks ?

    • OK, if you were an alien, where would you land? Somehow anywhere in the United States seems to be not a very bright idea. Stupid Roswell aliens...

      Given the picture it seems like it would be a bright idea.

      Unless the aliens' eyes couldn't adjust after being in the darkness of space. Maybe the Roswell aliens were blinded by Las Vegas?

    • Re:Alien landing sight... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by julesh ( 229690 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @10:06AM (#10044070)
      OK, if you were an alien, where would you land? Somehow anywhere in the United States seems to be not a very bright idea. Stupid Roswell aliens...

      An interesting question. Depends on the goals of the mission, I suspect.

      A couple of profiles thrown off the top of my head:

      - Make contact with global leaders

      Assuming the aliens make judgments in the same way we do, I would go for either Eastern USA, Western Europe or Japan. If an assumption is made of global government, Eastern USA looks better developed so I would aim for there. If the working assumption is continental governments, there seems to be a greater degree of centralisation in Western Europe, so I'd head for either Madrid or Paris, figuring that one of those two is likely to be the European administration centre. Probably Paris, due to its more central location.

      - Study the behaviour of the technology possessing inhabitants of this world

      I'd head for an area on the edge of a bright patch, but far enough away that I'm likely to be able to go unnoticed. West China, East Russia, and North Africa all look quite appealing, with little to distinguish between them. I'd probably visit all three, on the basis that there might be regional variation in behaviour.

  • Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Funny)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:27AM (#10043099)
    Why is half of Texas so dim?
    • Hey! It's not "dim"... It's either "Handicapable", or "Differently Abled"... or were you talking about the picture?

    • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:38AM (#10043185)


      > Why is half of Texas so dim?

      Presumably you're setting up for a joke about which half is missing its idiot...

      But seriously, I noticed the same think. The whole USA seems to be divided by a line that runs straight north from the most southerly point of Texas. Is that for real, or just an artifact of the image-making process?

      Other interesting stuff:

      • Check out the lattice checking European Russia to the far east.
      • Check out the lighting along the lower (northerly) Nile.
      • On the small map, look how clearly the coastlines of Scandanavia are delineated. On the larger map, look at the coastlines of Italy, southern France, and Spain.
      • On the larger map, notice the rectangular lattice on the USAian plains and around Rio and Buenos Aires. (Possibly an artifact, but it doesn't show up in most other places with similar amounts of light.)

      • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:4, Informative)

        by daniil ( 775990 ) <evilbj8rn@hotmail.com> on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:51AM (#10043275) Journal
        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).

        • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Informative)

          by hal9000 ( 80652 )
          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...

          I dunno, I wouldn't say transportation is less developed in the US west, just developed later and rooted in different technology, mainly automobiles. Western cities tend to be more spread out because of that, and the west as a whole is less densly populated than the east, not because it hasn't had the time to devel

      • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by topher1kenobe ( 2041 )
        Some guesses:

        1. This is a composite, which means that the picture were taken at different times. Maybe is just wasn't as dark when they took the western picture.

        2. There just aren't as many people in the western half of the US as there are in the eastern half.

      • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Skinny Rav ( 181822 )
        And it seems that you can still see the ancient silk trade route through Middle Asia leading from Middle East to China

        Raf

      • Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:5, Funny)

        by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:18AM (#10043525)
        But seriously, I noticed the same think. The whole USA seems to be divided by a line that runs straight north from the most southerly point of Texas. Is that for real, or just an artifact of the image-making process?

        Please stop telling people about the parts of the US west of the Mississippi River. The reason we're here is because they're not.

        Thanks.

    • McDonald Observatory (Score:4, Informative)

      by grouse ( 89280 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:07AM (#10043412)
      Well, there are two reasons. One is that the McDonald Observatory [utexas.edu], and the largest telescope in the continental U.S. is out there, and their Light Pollution Program [mcdonaldobservatory.org] 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:Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Nick of NSTime ( 597712 )
      Texas is a large state, with the greatest landmass after Alaska. Most of the 20 million+ people who live in Texas reside along the I35 corridor (Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio) and the coast (Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, and the Rio Grande Valley). West of Fort Worth is a barren wasteland until you get to El Paso, which is on the westmost tip of Texas.

      To give you an idea of the size of Texas, the distance between the eastmost city (Texarkana) and westmost city (El Paso) is nearly equal to t

  • That's not very new stuff... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:27AM (#10043101)
    if you have been a fan of Xearth and the better versions, it is sorta..errr.. 3 years late as far as a scoop.

    Oh by the way, did you try www.google.com yet?
    It's a pretty new site that just opened.


  • > Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Eareth from space at night.

    Actually it was Saturdays...

    At any rate, if you click the link, click the resulting image to get a bigger one, and then resize it, it makes pretty nice wallpaper. Unfortunately the aspect ratio isn't fit for a desktop, so you'll have to trim it or let the aspect ratio change to get the whole thing.

    Still makes pretty nice wallpaper, though.

    • Re:Wallpaper. (Score:2, Funny)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      At any rate, if you click the link, click the resulting image to get a bigger one, and then resize it, it makes pretty nice wallpaper. Unfortunately the aspect ratio isn't fit for a desktop, so you'll have to trim it or let the aspect ratio change to get the whole thing.

      Alternatively, you could always upgrade your graphics card, buy a VGA/DVI converter connector and a couple of 20" LCD displays. That should sort out the aspect ratio problem.

      • Re:Wallpaper. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by KyleCordes ( 10679 )
        I have this image as wallpaper, spanned across two 19" LCDs.

        Yes, it does fix the aspect ratio problem (almost, I intentionally leave off Antarctica to show the rest larger), and it makes fastastic "wallpaper".

  • Electricity Bill (Score:3, Funny)

    by Space_Soldier ( 628825 ) <not4_u@hotmail.com> on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#10043114)
    It tells you who is paying their electricity bill and who is not. Africa is awfully dark.

  • What a waste! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keoghp ( 457883 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#10043116)
    All that light headed skywards when it was intended for the ground. Apart from the waste of valuable resources good old Mr Alien can see us!

    • Re:What a waste! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:35AM (#10043161) Homepage
      I am Belgian (VERY bright on the map). In Belgium, all motorways are lit by lampposts all of the time (don't ask why). It does mean it has become completely impossible to see more then 2-3 stars at night. Light-pollution has become an issue and the astronomers are organising a "dark" night once a year, asking municipalities and private people to turn off the flood-lights. There are now standards on how much light a lamppost is allowed to shine upwards.

      • Re:What a waste! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by optimus2861 ( 760680 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:38AM (#10043728)
        When I visited the UK a couple of years ago, what struck me was the unnatural glow that's ever-present around the horizon at night from the incredible amount of light being poured into the night sky; it looks as if it's perpetually an hour after sunset. Very few stars ever come out. Most of that light was probably from London, even though I was over an hour's drive north of the city. Being raised in rural Canada, I could always just go out into the front yard, look up, and get an awesome view of the night sky, including the Milky Way on a clear, moonless night. I feel some pity for kids being raised in those environments where they'll never be able to see it.
    • It's especially wasteful when you consider how much of it actually reaches someone's eye.

  • River Nile and east-russian (rail)road (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MavEtJu ( 241979 ) <slashdot&mavetju,org> on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:29AM (#10043123) Homepage
    The most beautiful part of it is still the bright line going through Egypt where the Nile river is.

    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?

  • 2002? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xetrov ( 267777 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:29AM (#10043126)
    Anyone else notice the 2002 date on the image?

  • new? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:30AM (#10043128) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Scroll (Score:3, Informative)

    by Crazieeman ( 610662 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:30AM (#10043132) Journal
    If you scroll to the bottom, it even says it was a previous APOD... from 2002.

  • cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by chegosaurus ( 98703 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:30AM (#10043133) Homepage
    I can see my case mod from here!

  • Picture of the.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:30AM (#10043135)
    August 11 2002. That's what it says, when you click the image for the larger image (bottom left corner).

  • Also of interest (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bob The Lizard ( 193273 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:33AM (#10043151) Homepage
    Check out
    http://www.dfd.dlr.de [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 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Flamesplash ( 469287 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:35AM (#10043160) Homepage Journal
    Looks like they decided to repeat this imagine on APOD, it was last up Nov 2000 [nasa.gov]. 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.

  • north/south korea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by havaloc ( 50551 ) * on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:39AM (#10043190) Homepage
    What's telling is North and South Korea. North is almost 100% dark. See this link [globalsecurity.org] for a close up.
    • This has of course different interpretations:
      1. North Korea is undeveloped, and therefore has no lights to turn on at night
      2. North Korea has a strong government and little energy, therefore making it illegal to have lights on at night
      3. North Korea is paranoid, and keep blending all lights at night to make bombing more difficult
      4. Nort Korea is _really_ paranoid, and sofisticated, and have made a super hi-tech light stopping shield around them

      But seriously, I think the poverty of North Korea forces the governm

  • Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)

    by sarvik ( 762713 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:45AM (#10043230)
    ...it appears that the Earth is flat!

  • Editor's note: This image has become an email-attachment phenomenon! It has also generated many print requests. Unfortunately, we do not sell prints.

    What's stopping NASA from selling prints of images like this? It seems like it would be a good way for the public to show support for our favorite underfunded space program.

  • Projection (Score:3, Informative)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:49AM (#10043260)
    what kind of projection is this?

    It seems to make the world seem very small (exaggerates the UK) but doesn't exaggerate Greenland. The sense of a small world may also be due to focusing only on light areas.

    The Peters projection [petersmap.com] gives an accurate representation of the sizes of countries.

  • Africa (Score:4, Insightful)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:49AM (#10043262)
    No wonder it used to be called 'The Dark Continent'!

    It's quite sobering, actually. You look at the US and Japan and Western Europe blazing away, and then realise there are people elsewhere who have literally *nothing*, not even something as 'simple' as electric light.

  • Pretty old image (Score:3, Informative)

    by PhrozenF ( 205108 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:49AM (#10043264)
    This image is actually pretty old. It's been used as a wallpaper in a lower res in many Windows and Linux (KDE) themes too. Ain't nothing new, just that today it became the pic of the day.

    NASA must be cursing slashdot right now for posting a link to the hi-res image download page. Surely, it will multiply like a plague in the next few days, not only will us geeks be leetching this photo, but everything else that we find interesting, in high res.

    I prefer the Nasa JPL DFRC (Dryden) Planes pics as opposed to the heavens and the earth at DMSP (what's with Nasa's naming scheme?). All those X-Planes and B-2s and SR-71s in Hi Res.

    Go leech some of the most beautiful war machines ever created. Sonic Booms photographed..

    http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/

  • News for Nerds. Stuff that matters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @08:50AM (#10043271) Journal
    How does this matter? It's neat, but it's something I'd expect in my inbox from my annoying friends, not on slashdot.
  • That image is a newer one that highlights LightPollution. You can find out more about light pollution at the IDA's [darksky.org] website.

    Actually this is gives just a rough idea of what light pollution you might experience. If you want to find out more, you can look at the The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness [inquinamentoluminoso.it].

    If you are in north america, the Clear Sky Clock [cleardarksky.com] gives you an quick way to see what light pollution is like on your clock having extracted sections from the atlas. For instance the Montreal c [cleardarksky.com]

  • It looks like the small version of the photo was taken recently, but if you view the "larger" version of it, you get the old 2002 image (note, the 2002 image is much darker).

  • Amatuer Astronomers (and Pros) Cringe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:03AM (#10043375)
    Light pollution is overlooked by most of the populace, but to us amatuer astronomers it is a royal pain in the ass. I now have to travel 3 hours into the rural sticks to get a glimpse of the Milky Way (I'd have to get on a plane and travel to Africa to enjoy it in its full glory). I'd be willing to bet that half the US population has never even seen the galactic clouds of the Milky Way ... which is a shame because it borders on a religous experience.

    Not to sound like Smokey the Bear but please Please do your part in help preventing light pollution and save a little extra in your monthly energy costs in the process. Use motion sensors for your outside security lights and timers for walkway lighting. Blinds and curtains to prevent inside lighting from leaking out into the neighborhood.

    You'd be suprised how many backyard astronomers there are!!

    More info on the problem:
    International Dark Sky Association [darksky.org]

  • Oh Crap ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ReidMaynard ( 161608 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:08AM (#10043420) Homepage
    It looks like .. yes .. I left the back porch light on, again.

  • Something old is now new. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stumbles ( 602007 ) on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:17AM (#10043506)
    This DMSP image produced by the Block V spacecraft is nothing new and has been around for a very long time. As far back as 1982 we used this image to create a picture we gave our students who reached honor grad status.

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