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This is a composite image
(hexbear.net)
You can't literally see lights from space or whatever. If somewhere had less coverage on google maps you wouldn't think it's uninhabited, but for some reason, people irl seem to be constantly referring to this image as though it's a literal picture. Mostly for 'civilized' reasons, but also light pollution and just other stuff. Maybe this just made the rounds on reddit or something?
Yes but this is still a tiny amount of light compared to the composite images and slow shutter speed images intended to capture light. It's the same technique as photographing epic pictures of stars and galaxies in the night sky.
okay but i was replying to OP saying you literally can't see them from space and you can?
you could use the same argument about the aurora borealis, just because it's darker in person doesn't mean you can't see it
I wasn't trying to be rude, sorry if I came off that way.
it's all good, i think i took your reply in the wrong way, so i'm sorry about that. I was replying to OP saying you can't see the lights from space, so I took the correction as an "um, actually you can't, you can only really see them in a camera picture", where after rereading, I think you were more responding to me responding to OP's entire post and saying that it would only look like the same brightness as the composite image with the high shutter speeds getting an exposure probably higher than the human eye could get, which is a fair assumption
that being said i just looked at the first ISS picture I posted again and you can see the metadata, which has it at a shutter speed of one second so