"A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy. Raw data was downloaded from;
Yeah, I saw that -- still couldn't. bstx's annotations look good though, in which case it flies higher than I thought. I had the scale wrong by maybe a factor of 3.
It's hard because we're travelling in a weird direction, so everything's "upside down" as well as distorted. The first easy-to-pick-out spot is about 13s in: you can see the shape of San Francisco Bay (upside down) in the bottom of the image (as well as, less obviously, Sacramento and then Reno to its left) and a huge city right in the middle of the image (near the top of the globe) that is LA. The Central Valley (Fresno etc) is also clear in this spot once you've picked out the others.
The second really clear spot is about 17s you can see Baja California fork off from the main continent; a moment later, the first big electrical storm is just west (i.e. to the right of) the Mexico City mega-city.
Made by James Drake: http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/