Above and Beyond: Italy at Night

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with the NASA Earth Observatory.

All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA

except:

·       Daytime photo of lightning in Arizona courtesy of Wikipedia user ed ouimette

·       Photo of oil wells and flare in North Dakota courtesy of Tim Evanson

·       Photo of fracking equipment in North Dakota courtesy of Joshua Doubek

·       Photo of old and new San Francisco – Oakland Bay bridges courtesy of Frank Schulenburg

·       Sea creature illustration copyright The National Library of Israel, Shapell Family Digitization Project _and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Geography – Historic Cities Research Project

 

Music courtesy of Associated Production Music

Written by Tracy Vogel

Designed by Marc Lussier

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A satellite image of land which glows bright with orange lights.

 

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[GENTLE MUSIC]

 

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Text, Astronauts on the International Space Station took this image of Italy in 2014.

 

In the south, an exact circle on land remains dark and is labeled Mt. Etna.

 

Text, The dark patch on Sicily is Mt. Etna, an active volcano whose slopes are unpopulated.

 

A halo wraps around Earth's horizon and glows a light green color.

 

Atoms and molecules excited by sunlight release their energy at night, creating the green glowing band above the horizon.