Thursday, November 11, 2010

Twinkle, Twinkle


This is a night view of the Nile River and Delta from the International Space Station.

The Cairo metropolitan area is the very bright area where the river flows into the Delta. The photograph also shows the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean - the Tel-Aviv metropolitan area in Israel and Amman in Jordan. The lights also show the coast line of the Sinai Peninsula and the city lights of the island of Cyprus at the top of the image.

The thin yellow curving band at the top of the image is airglow, a faint band of light emission that results from the interaction of atmospheric atoms and molecules with solar radiation at nearly 100 kilometres above the earth.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tel-Aviv. I would like Tel-Aviv. Think you would too.

Jayne said...

I now have Don McLean's Vincent in my head
"Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue"

River said...

Pretty image there. Now tell the driver of that thing to fly over my house, I'll stand on the lawn and wave at you. Okay?