Before the Dawn in America’s Heartland

With hardly a cloud in sight, astronauts had a sweeping view of nighttime lights in the U.S. Midwest. The predawn hours brought clear skies over much of the eastern United States on October 18, 2026. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station seized the opportunity to capture this wide-angle photo at 4:54 a.m. Central Daylight Time (09:54 Universal Time), with illuminated cities large and small arrayed across the darkened landscape. The U.S. Midwest’slargest metropolitan areas, such as Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan, stand out as some of the brightest features. Mid-sized cities—including Indianapolis, Indiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Louisville, Kentucky—and their interconnections along state and interstate highways also shine brightly. Above the web of nighttime lights and Earth’s lower atmosphere, a diffuse layer of green and orange is visible along the horizon to the left. This band of light isairglow, produced when sunlight strikes atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere and causes them to ejectphotons. To the right, light from the Sun arcs across the horizon; sunrise was about an hour away on the East Coast and about two hours away in Chicago. Astronaut photos and otherremote sensingobservations of nighttime lights are scientifically valuable for tracking changes in the built environment. For example,Chicago's lightscapeappears a homogeneous pale yellow in the wide view above. But in detailed photos, like the one below, a range of colors stemming from different types of lighting is discernible. Using NASA’s extensiveGateway to Astronaut Photography of Eartharchive, researchers havedeveloped a methodfor distinguishing lighting types within the pixels of nighttime photos. Systematically quantifying urban lights’ brightness, color, and extent can provide insight intohow cities grow and evolve. Satellite sensors also observe changes to lighting. In particular, NASA’sBlack Marblenighttime lights product suite uses satellite observations to produce science-quality records of nighttime lights across the globe at daily, monthly, and yearly time scales. In the eastern U.S., scientists have used these data to track everything from power outages and restorationfollowing major stormsto lighting changes associated withnew infrastructuretotransitions to LED lightingfrom older forms. Astronaut photographISS075-E-226709was acquired on October 18, 2026, with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 14 millimeters, and photographISS070-E-105097was acquired on March 1, 2024, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters. They are provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The images were taken by members of theExpedition 75andExpedition 70crews, respectively. The images have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. TheInternational Space Station Programsupports the laboratory as part of theISS National Labto help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSCGateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Story by Lindsey Doermann. Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet. The tilt in Earth's axis of rotation makes the apparent position of continents shift with the seasons in imagery from… A bright lens of anorthosite, a rock type prevalent on the lunar surface, is cradled within sheared rocks in the… Over the years, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have photographed several of the cities hosting the 2026 FIFA World… Subscribe to the Earth Observatory and get the Earth in your inbox. NASA's Earth Observatory brings you the Earth, every day, with in-depth stories and stunning imagery. Open access to NASA’s archive of Earth science data