On October 18, 2026, an astronaut on the International Space Station captured a wide-angle photo of the eastern United States before dawn, showcasing illuminated cities across the dark landscape. The photo, taken at 4:54 a. m. Central Daylight Time, features major metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as mid-sized cities like Indianapolis and Cincinnati, with their interconnections along highways visible as bright lights.
The image also displays a diffuse layer of green and orange airglow along the horizon, produced when sunlight interacts with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere. To the right of the image, the light from the Sun is visible, indicating that sunrise was about an hour away on the East Coast and two hours away in Chicago.
Astronaut photos like this one are valuable for tracking changes in the built environment, and researchers have developed methods to distinguish between different types of lighting in nighttime photos.