New Delhi: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), it appears, seem to have taken a pledge of sorts to treat viewers and space enthusiasts to stunning images of how the Earth looks from space.
One of the latest ones doing the rounds is an image of the city many people have on their wishlists – Paris.
Yes, the City of Lights caught the astronauts' attention as the space station glided past it on April 8. The image turned out to be magnificent as the city lights made the street grid more dominant, providing a completely different set of visual features from those visible during the day.
The Seine river, for example, stands out in the day time, however, in the night view, it is merely a thin black line and is hard to detect until you focus on the strong meanders and the street lights on both banks.
NASA further explains the image saying, 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.
The image was taken 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.
