Since researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA released a new Earth at night map in 2012, Roman and teammates at NASA's Earth Observing Satellite Data and Information System ( EOSDIS) have been working to integrate nighttime data into NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) and Worldview mapping tools. They are now on the verge of providing daily, high- definition views of Earth at night, and are targeting the release of such data to the science community later this year. 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.In the years since the 2011 launch of the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, researchers have been analysing night lights data and developing new software and algorithms to make night lights imagery clearer, more accurate and readily available. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there.

The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region.Įven more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centers. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth's surface. This image of Earth's city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS).

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