Wednesday 17 May 2006

Night arrives over Europe and Northern Africa - NASA


Night arrives over Europe and Northern Africa, part of a set of NASA pictures showing earth from space. See if you can work out why the particular picture above is a fake.

LINKS: What a pretty blue planet - Mr Dreckard's Social Studies Classroom
'Image of the day' gallery - NASA

TAGS: Art, Science

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Something doesn't look right but I can't put my finger on it.

The transition between full sunlight and total darkness seems very sudden. Plus, the area around Paris and the East Coast of Spain seem to pump out a relatively enormous amount of artificial light considering they are just entering twilight.

Other than that, I can't detect any obvious flaws... (?)

Anonymous said...

Oh, the total absence of clouds is worth noting also.

sagenz said...

bright sunlight then darness. maybe an eclipse but not sunset, apart from the fact that the shadow is not circular. yes its a fake

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Night "arrives". It would be wrong if described as day "arrives". The night is coming from the east. So that's OK.

Anonymous said...

I do not think it is fake. Perhaps a composition with clouds filtered out but I do not think it fake.

Anonymous said...

Those people saying that day and night are "round the wrong way" are not thinking!

1) The sun rises in the east and sets in the west (i.e. looking down on the North Pole the Earth spins anticlockwise)
2) Once a day, Western Europe is in darkness while Eastern Europe is in daylight. This would be called MORNING.
3) Once a day, Eastern Europe is in darkness while Western Europe is in daylight. This would be called EVENING.

Berend de Boer said...

lancashire lad, there are two other issues: the day is longer nearer the poles, so wouldn't you expect a curve like this?

And secondly, the earth is tilted 23 degrees, so what effect does that have?

Anonymous said...

It is obvious: If you use the same photographical exposure time for the whole picture then the night area would be totally black.