GUEST BLOG—NASA.ORG**--Around local midnight time on April
8, 2015, astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph
of Paris, often referred to as the “City of Light.”
The pattern
of the street grid dominates at night, providing a completely different set of
visual features from those visible during the day. For instance, the winding
Seine River is a main visual cue by day, but here the thin black line of the
river is hard to detect until you focus on the strong meanders and the street
lights on both banks.
The
brightest boulevard in the dense network of streets is the Avenue des
Champs-Élysées, the historical axis of the city, as designed in the 17th
century. Every year on Bastille Day (July 14), the largest military parade in
Europe processes down the Champs Élysées, reviewed by the President of the
Republic. This grand avenue joins the royal Palace of the Tuileries—whose
gardens appear as a dark rectangle on the river—to the star-like meeting place
of eleven major boulevards at the Arc de Triomphe.
The many
forested parks of Paris stand out as black polygons—such as the Bois de
Boulogne and Vincennes. Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports are distinguished
by their very bright lights next to the dark areas of runways and surrounding
open land. Paris’s great ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique, encloses the
city center.
Astronaut
photograph ISS043-E-93480 was acquired on April 8, 2015, with a Nikon D4
digital camera using a 400 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew
Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit,
Johnson Space Center.
More information and annotated
images: NASA's Earth Observatory
Image Credit: NASA
TEXT: ** M. Justin Wilkinson, Texas
State University, Jacobs Contract at NASA-JSC
NASA Editor: Sarah Loff
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