Crew aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of the city lights of Naples and the Campania region of southern Italy. The Naples region is one of the brightest in the country; roughly three million people live in and around this metropolitan area.
The different colors of lights in the scene reflect some of the history of development in the area. The green lights are mercury vapor bulbs, an older variety that has been replaced in newer developments by orange sodium bulbs (yellow-orange). To the northeast, the lightless gaps between the homes and businesses are agricultural fields. The bright yellow-orange complex amidst the fields is the CIS emporium, the largest commercial retail facility in Europe. The large black circular area in the photo is Mount Vesuvius, the only active volcano on Europe’s mainland.
The astronauts and cosmonauts on the Space Station take pictures of Earth nearly every day, and over a year that adds up to thousands of photos. The staff at the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had the enviable job of going through this year’s crop to pick their top 17 photos of Earth for 2017—here’s what they chose! Watch the video in 4K: https://youtu.be/NqWwhY_8j0I
Image Credit: NASA