The Persian Gulf. At Night. From Space.

Check it out. Here are four separate nighttime images from space looking down at the same place, but taken under differing amounts of moonlight.

Images from NASA's Earth Observatory via the Suomi NPP Satellite

I am not sure what is going on between Riyadh and Doha as there is some apparent motion of the lights, but the overall effect here is that with moonlight it is pretty easy to see the physical features of the Gulf region. The city lights are pretty constant throughout.

For those who haven't noticed, moonlight is indeed pretty bright and the human eye does very nicely under moonlight levels of illumination.  It is a shame that we light our cities at the intensity levels that we do, as in many cases it is much more light than we really need.

Check out the full-resolution of the images and learn more from NASA here.