Schlagwort: NASA

Ende Januar ist die ISS über Ostasien geflogen und hat, wie schon über anderen Teilen des Planeten Nachtaufnahmen Fotos von den Landstrichen gemacht, die sie gerade überflogen hat. Hier unter anderem von Nordkorea. Und da ist es bei Nacht ganz schön dunkel. Hier als Kartenversion. Da ist nicht etwas Wasser zwischen oder so.

Flying over East Asia, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) took this night image of the Korean Peninsula. Unlike daylight images, city lights at night illustrate dramatically the relative economic importance of cities, as gauged by relative size. In this north-looking view, it is immediately obvious that greater Seoul is a major city and that the port of Gunsan is minor by comparison. There are 25.6 million people in the Seoul metropolitan area—more than half of South Korea’s citizens—while Gunsan’s population is 280,000.

North Korea is almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea and China. The darkened land appears as if it were a patch of water joining the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan. Its capital city, Pyongyang, appears like a small island, despite a population of 3.26 million (as of 2008). The light emission from Pyongyang is equivalent to the smaller towns in South Korea.

(Fotos: NASA, via io9)

Hier der Flug noch als kurzes Timelapse Video. Ab Sekunde 14 kann man das ziemlich gut sehen.