Earth Lights

[Vicki]

This is awesome! Take a look!

 antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg

[Maria]

That's pretty amazing, and rather beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.

Maria

[Lesley]

vicki,
very cool picture! thank you

lesley

[Ann]

That's amazing Vicki. The countries all show up so clearly.

I can't believe how lit up north east England is.

Ann

[Gaby]

That's so nice.  

One of our Traders has the entire photo across her 3 (maybe 4, not sure) computer screens.  Looks great.  

And now I have it as my wall paper, at the least the North/South America bit.  

Thank you.

[Silk]

Thanks Vicki

I always find that kind of thing facinating.

Mind you, did anyone follow the link given on the picture and then follow the links to the CIA files on the individual countries?

I did accidently, trying to see the individiul pics for the UK and instead I found the link was to a data file on the UK. It is one very comprehensive file.

[Ann]

Mark, I'm intrigued. I tried following the links, but I couldn't find any reference to CIA files. Can you post the url please?

Ann

[Lesley]

ann, cia, site


www.odci.gov/

thanks mark, i almost burnt the children's meal spending time on this site!
fun though.
lesley

[Ann]

Thanks Lesley. I just went to have a look. Mark's right. There's a lot of information there.

Ann

[topaz]

Before you all get TOO carried away with the superficial attractiveness of such pictures, have you given some thought to the ruinous effect all this has on our world? Quite apart from the long-term climatic damage to our planet through the burning of fossil fuels to provide the energy for such wastefulness, unrestrained light pollution has all but destroyed views of the night sky for most of us. So if you care about our environment, look up 'campaign for dark skies' on your search engine.

[Silk]

Topaz

Couldn't agree more. As a long term astronomer who has had to give it up because he now lives in London, I know all too well the effects of light polution.  (Which is why I want to be a well off author/artist and go and live in southern Ireland)

The first thoughts through my head when I saw this was
(a) that must be built up of thousands of photo's coz the world aint dark all at the same time.
(b) jeez! look at all the wasted light energy there, (because an efficient light doesn't need to shine up, only down)
(c) Still its very pretty though and you can realy see the mass population areas, in comparison to those that appear almost devoid of life.

Sorry Lesley
I am always side surfing like that, wastes far too much time and fills my head with thousands of useless facts.

Just to show malice and burn more dinners, here's another URL to waste hours on
www.snopes2.com/
It has most of the urban legends on it and also answers another one that was bugging me from another thread.
I was sure I had heard duck quacks echoing.

[Lesley]

silk, we finished dinner, then i checked out the site.
most entertaining. its a good thing my husband came home the children were feeling neglected.
nothing like a good urban legend (or several) before bed.

lesley