New NASA Video of Earth at Night

City lights show humanity's spread across the planet's surface from hundreds of miles up.

A new video released Wednesday by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) offers an unprecedented look of the entirety of the Earth's nighttime surface as seen from outer space. The 30-second video stitches together 2.5 terabytes of image data taken during 312 orbits of the planet by NASA's Suomi NPP satellite, which was launched in October 2011. The video opens with a view of the Asia-Pacific rim, with the city lights of Japan and the heavily populated areas of China's coastal regions near the center of the frame. The Earth's rotation then brings the lights of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East into view, followed by Europe and the mostly-dark continent of Africa. Finally, the Americas rotate into view…

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