To paraphrase an old expression: “all
roads lead to Liège.” Or at least you could get that impression from
this astronaut photograph. The brightly lit core of the Liège urban area
appears to lie at the center of a network of roadways—traceable by
continuous orange lighting extending out into the rural and relatively
dark Belgian countryside. For a sense of scale, the distance from image
left to right is approximately 70 kilometers (43 miles). The region to
the southeast of Verviers includes agricultural fields and forest;
hence, it appears almost uniformly dark at night.
The image was taken using the European Space Agency’s nodding
mechanism on the International Space Station (ISS), also known as the
NightPod.
This electro-mechanical mount system for digital cameras was designed
to compensate for the motion of the ISS relative to the Earth. The
primary goal was to take high-resolution, long-exposure digital imagery
of the Earth from the
ISS Cupola,
particularly cities at night. While the official NightPod mission has
been completed, the mechanism remains onboard for astronauts to use.
Liège is the third most populous metro area in Belgium, after
Brussels and Antwerp. It includes 52 municipalities and the nearby city
of Seraing. It is also an important economic center for the country,
home to a diverse array of industries including mechanical, information
and biotechnology; beer and chocolate; light armaments; and
steel-making. The metropolitan area also boasts a wide array of
cultural, historical, and artistic attractions that make it a popular
destination for residents of France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Astronaut photograph
ISS034-E-5935
was acquired on December 8, 2012, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using
a 180 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth
Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,
Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the
Expedition 34 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The
International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the
ISS National Lab
to 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/JSC
Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by William L. Stefanov, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC.
- Instrument: ISS - Digital Camera
