I’m surprised by the light between Great Britain and Norway. Are these wind farms or oil rigs? Or stranded ships?
It'll be mostly oil rigs with a few fishing boats and supply ships I think.
Wind farms are much closer to the coast.
Industry mostly.
I wonder what the red/orange lights signify. For example, in Ireland. And the blue.
North Sea secret island
Where is Epstein island, actually?
I didn't realize Belgium and Netherlands were so densely populated.
The Netherlands have this special place called Westland also known as the Glass City. It's where they grow all of their tulips or whatever in greenhouses. The entire area is filled with back to back greenhouses that blast huge amounts of lights down to make the flowers and fruits and so forth grow all of the time. It's actually clearly visible from space, being super bright in an already very densely populated country.
We have street lights on every highway and almost every public road.
Is there a distinct difference between the two images or is it "just another image"?
Just another image :/ (with only slightly more pixels)
Here is more MBs:
https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2025/12/europe_at_night_from_space/27044305-1-eng-GB/Europe_at_night_from_space.png
And a comparison between 2017 & 2022:
comparison between 2017 and 2022
(Via: esa.int/Europe_at_night_from_space)
And a bunch of neat pics over at wiki/Category:Europe_at_night_seen_from_space.
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(Europe, North Africa and Western Asia at night by VIIRS, 13,500 × 13,500 pixels)
What do the colors mean??
They seem to be oversaturated colours of the lights, no? Probably the red is sodium lights (about ~2500K colour temperature), yellow is what we look at as the more modern while led light...blue...idk, does Ukraine/Moldova/Hungary use 6500K streetlights?
It’s interesting to see the distinction between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Damn how do we need so much lights?
The contrast with north Africa is astounding.
For the map enthused!
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