Jump to content

File:India-Pakistan Borderlands at Night - NASA Earth Observatory.jpg

Page contents not supported in other languages.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

India-Pakistan_Borderlands_at_Night_-_NASA_Earth_Observatory.jpg (720 × 480 pixels, file size: 122 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description

To download the full resolution and other files go to: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52008&src=...

Clusters of yellow lights on the Indo-Gangetic Plain reveal numerous cities large and small in this astronaut photograph of northern India and northern Pakistan. Of the hundreds of clusters, the largest are the capital cities of Islamabad, Pakistan, and New Delhi, India. (For scale, these metropolitan areas are approximately 700 kilometers or 435 miles apart.) The lines of major highways connecting the cities also stand out. More subtle, but still visible at night, are the general outlines of the towering and partly cloud-covered Himalayas to the north (image left).

A striking feature is the line of lights, with a distinctly orange hue, snaking across the center of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible).

This image was taken with a 16 mm lens, which provides the wide field of view, as the International Space Station (ISS) was tracking towards the southeast across India. The ISS crew took the image as part of a continuous series of frames, each with a one-second exposure time to maximize light collection. Unfortunately, this also causes blurring of some ground features.

The distinct, bright zone above the horizon (visible at image top) is airglow, a phenomena caused by excitation of atoms and molecules high in the atmosphere (above 80 kilometers, or 50 miles altitude) by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Part of the ISS Permanent Multipurpose Module and a solar panel array are visible at image right.

Astronaut photograph ISS028-E-29679 was acquired on August 21, 2011, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 16 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 28 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC.

The Earth Observatory's mission is to share with the public the images, stories, and discoveries about climate and the environment that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and climate models.

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Add us to your circles on Google+
Date
Source India-Pakistan Borderlands at Night
Author NASA's Earth Observatory
Camera location31° 29′ 39.34″ N, 74° 42′ 25.31″ E Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

Licensing

w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA Earth Observatory at https://www.flickr.com/photos/68824346@N02/6750276985. It was reviewed on 2 July 2012 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

2 July 2012

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

21 August 2011

31°29'39.340"N, 74°42'25.312"E

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current17:12, 2 July 2012Thumbnail for version as of 17:12, 2 July 2012720 × 480 (122 KB)Dzlinker== {{int:filedesc}} == {{Information |Description=To download the full resolution and other files go to: [http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52008&src=flickr earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52008&src=...] Clusters of yellow l...

The following 2 pages use this file:

Global file usage