NASA astronaut captures predawn city lights over eastern US

According to NASA, clear skies covered much of the eastern United States before dawn on October 18, 2026. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a wide-angle view at 4:54 a.m. Central Daylight Time (09:54 Universal Time). Illuminated cities appeared across the darkened terrain.

The U.S. Midwest’s largest metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan, were among the brightest features. Indianapolis, Indiana, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, also appeared along with interconnections along state and interstate highways.

Above the web of nighttime lights and Earth’s lower atmosphere, a diffuse band of green and orange appeared along the horizon. NASA said the band was airglow, produced when sunlight struck atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere and caused them to eject photons. Light from the Sun also arced across the horizon.

NASA said astronaut photographs and remote sensing observations of nighttime lights help scientists track changes in the built environment. Detailed photographs show colors associated with different types of lighting. Researchers have developed a method for distinguishing lighting types within the pixels of nighttime photos using NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth archive.

NASA’s Black Marble nighttime lights product suite uses satellite observations to produce science-quality records of nighttime lights across the globe at daily, monthly, and yearly time scales. Scientists have used these data in the eastern U.S. to track power outages and restoration after major storms, lighting changes from new infrastructure and transitions to LED lighting.

Astronaut photograph ISS075-E-226709 was acquired on October 18, 2026, with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 14 millimeters. Photograph ISS070-E-105097 was acquired on March 1, 2024, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters. The images were taken by members of the Expedition 75 and Expedition 70 crews, respectively. They were cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts were removed.