Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of southern Scandinavia just before midnight on April 3, 2015. Prominent features include a green aurora to the north, the blackness of the Baltic Sea (lower right), and clouds (top right) and snow (in Norway) illuminated by the full Moon.
City lights clearly show the coastline of the Skagerrak and Kattegat seaway that separates Denmark from its neighbors to the north and leads into the Baltic Sea. The largest light clusters on the seaway are the capital cities of Oslo and Copenhagen. Cities facing the Baltic are the Polish port of Gdansk and the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Smaller cities in northern Germany also trace the Baltic coastline (lower right).
Click here to view a daylight image of the coastline and seaway.
References & Resources
Astronaut photograph ISS043-E-86375 was acquired on April 3, 2015, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 24 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 43 crew. The image 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 M. Justin Wilkinson, Texas State University, Jacobs Contract at NASA-JSC.
