FIVE: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: Earth at Night

Earth at Night poster from Amazon

I've linked to a poster of this, which I can't actually recommend because I haven't seen it. But it's inexpensive, so it's not too much of a risk. There have been two versions of this composite. One dates from 2012 (the source of the Amazon poster) and an updated version from 2016, updated 2017 (shown above).

It's one of the most remarkable "photographs" ever made, even if it's not actually what I normally think of as a photograph. It's not just that it's a composite—some remarkable technology has to go into isolating the human-created lighting in an unconfused way, and not just to avoid cloud cover. NASA.gov has a short description of it on its Black Marble page, and, strictly for science geeks, there's there's a fuller technical paper at Elsevier. 

The technical aspects of the capture are just the tip of the iceberg. Earth's nighttime lights only approximately track with population—wealth also plays a big part in who's bright and who's dark—but you can see evidence of a lot of things, for instance that 80% of the US population lives in the Eastern half of the country, that Perth is the most remote city on Earth, that Africa has the lowest percentage of households with electricity, and that South Korea is effectively an island; and the outline of the Nile River is clear from space. RealLifeLore has a fun video about many of the things the Earth at Night composite shows about human civilization, clickbaitishly entitled "How 1 Photo From Space Explains ALL of History." Not quite, but they do explain lots of interesting things you might not notice on your own, for instance one lonely dot exactly in the center of Australia (it's Alice Springs, near a joint military base operated in cooperation between Australia and the United States that controls spy satellites) and why there are lights even in the world's seas and oceans (oil and gas fields).

Add to this the remarkable fact all of this happened just in the last 144 years give or take—Thomas Edison's big Eureka moment with the light bulb happened in 1879. We take it for granted, but human knowledge and technology is developing at warp speed.

Mike

*A list of a dozen beautiful gifty things in the spirit of the season.

Original contents copyright 2022 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jim Simmons: "Sigh. Another world map that thinks New Zealand doesn't exist."

Mike replies: A number of you noticed this. Here's the image I grabbed—I didn't crop it. Updated August 2017. Here's a JPEG of the 2012 image with New Zealand included. My sympathies to any cropped-off Kiwis! Did you make NASA mad at you or something?

Steven Palmer: "After seeing the 2012 map you linked to in the comments, I'm not sure how much faith I would put in those maps. Take a look at the amount of light coming from central western Australia in the 2012 version. As an Australian, I can assure you that part of the country is basically empty of human habitation. So where did all the lights come from?"

Mike replies: I wondered about the same thing. And in the newer map, those lights aren't there.

Peter Rees: "We New Zealanders are hard-wired to do two things: 1.) instantly detect capital Ns and Zs on any given page of text ('ooh, they're talking about us!'), and 2.) bristle at the injustice of the Mercator projection, which puts us right in the trim zone of any given world map."

JH: "I discovered that composite graphic years ago and adapted it to show something else—how those lighted high population areas are connected by submarine fiber optic cables—the cables that carry 99.99%+ of all the worlds communications. My version has been reproduced many times too! Nice that NASA images are in the public domain."

Mike replies: I've seen your map before too!

Helen: "NZ not on the map—it's a thing. And there are theories."

Comments

[Dave]

Does it come with a black light? :>)

[Francisco Cubas]

That lights in the picture roughly matches a map of the countries with more carbon emissions. The cost of lighting the night like that has been huge: climate crisis, a 6th mass extinction, the extraction of the natural resources of the whole world for the main benefit of a few, etc.

We have had scientific evidence about the link between fossil fuels and climate change for at least 50 years, and had 26 (!) UN conferences on the subject without any significant advance.

I admire science and technology, I love it. But I think the warp speed of human knowledge and technology is a dangeous notion, because it makes us feel that they're going to save us, that we are always just a new invention away of solving all our problems.

Our big problems are mainly political, and there's no invention that can solve them for us.

[Peter Nigos]

Invert the lights (and make the dark areas light) and you have the world hunger map. http://hungerintheworld.weebly.com/hunger-map.html
Similar maps are made to show world poverty.

[Peter Wright]

What happened to New Zealand?

[Paul Bakker]

Paul B
Where's New Zealand?

[Nick]

Another entry into 'maps without New Zealand'? I notice that the earlier version linked includes New Zealand, seems they have removed us in the update..

[Bruce Hedge]

It's out of stock right now. It's also so wrong as to be laughable. No way is there any light like that coming from the centre of Australia. Total waste of all that effort. The thought was OK, though.

[darlene]

That is an interesting video; thanks for posting!

[Michael Fewster]

It's a minor point, but in the interests of complete accuracy. That dot in the middle of Australia isn't the spy base. The Lights are the town of Alice Springs. The spy base is a few km away and it doesn't get lit up to that extent.
I used to live there and many of our friends were Americans who worked at the base.

[Peter Croft]

I fully agree with the Mr Cubas. All my life I was an optimist, believing in advances in science and technology to solve all our problems.

But at 75, I've lost hope. As long as money rules the world, the destruction of the Earth will continue. I truly believe we are entering the end phase of human civilisation. And those two masses of light on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean are the main cause.

I feel lucky that I won't live to see it happen, and that I live in one of the most benign places on Earth.

[Helen]

NZ not on the map - its a thing. And there are theories -
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/02/jacinda-ardern-asks-why-new-zealand-is-left-off-world-maps-in-new-tourism-campaign

[JH]

I forgot to mention - NZ is on the original NASA graphic way down in the lower RH corner. You can see where one of the cables from Sydney going across the Pacific connects.
https://www.foa.org/images/earth-with-cables.jpg
I've been there 4 times for conferences and training fiber optic techs myself.

[David]

I don't care how they did it - there is no way there is that much light in outback Australia - which makes me wonder of the accuracy of the rest of it.

[Peter]

Well, I live in Perth Western Australia and we know very well how isolated we are, try flying some were cheaply. The nearest capital city is in Indonesia!

[Lynn]

That light in the "red centre" of Australia is probably the town of Alice Springs. The joint military facility at Pine Gap is quite a few miles out of town, and would be unlikely to advertise its presence so brightly.

[Thank Lynn. I revised the post. --Mike]

[Peter Croft]

David, all those lights in the outback of Australia are bushfires.

Actually, I'm joking. They're really enormous cities that cleverly move underground as the sun rises and only come out at night. :-)