Take a closer look at the city lights!

A gentleman called me up this evening wanting to know how/why we put the city lights on the Futurecast. (see the image to the left.) Having the cities fade on and off makes it easier for our viewers to see that a certain weather event will happen during the day or night.

We got to talking about how satellites take pictures of the city lights and I told him that I would post some information on the pictures and what some people call light pollution.

First of all, this picture is absolutely awesome! CLICK HERE (It's too large for me to put on the blog.) It'd be a great picture for a computer desktop.

Humans have surely lit up the earth, no? What's amazing to note are the poverty-stricken areas of the world. You would think with the billions of people living in India and China, it'd be better lit. The brightest spot on the dark globe are clearly Europe and the United States. -ERIC