Earth at Night.

Can you find your favorite country or city ? Surprisingly, on this world-wide nightscape, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe , the eastern United States , and Japan . Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America , Africa , Asia , and Australia . The featured composite was created from images that were collected during cloud-free periods in April and October 2012 by the Suomi-NPP satellite , from a polar orbit about 824 kilometers above the surface, using its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).