Cities at Night

Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) take hundreds of night-time pictures each year of cities around the globe. Cities at Night is a "citizen science project that aims to create a map, similar to Google maps, of the Earth at night using night-time color photographs taken by astronauts onboard the ISS." As the project team explains, human expertise is more effective at classifying and geo-referencing these photos than an algorithm. In the Maps section of this website, visitors can help the project team with these processes via a series of links (dark skies, lost at night, and night cities). In addition, this section contains photographs that have already been classified and geo-referenced by previous users, which are organized via a series of maps. The Cities at Night project is intended to collect information about light pollution: an issue that visitors may learn more about via the light pollution and research tabs, respectively. [--SAMPLE RECORD--]