U.S.-Mexico Border at Night from Space

Today is the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. The Apollo program tested our technological abilities and taught us a great deal not only about the Moon, but the entire solar system. The program also gave us a unique perspective on our own world and allowed us to see it in its entirety for the very first time. 

Today, our astronauts don't voyage as far from home, but they still are giving us interesting views of our home world. Here's an example - a nighttime photo from the International Space Station showing portion of the U.S.-Mexico border:

Image from ISS Expedition 30 Crew. Credit: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA-Johnson Space Center. The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

It is a pretty interesting shot as the U.S.-Mexico border is clearly illuminated and the two cities along the border, Calexico in the U.S. and Mexicali in Mexico, are so radically different. The U.S. Mexico border is also illuminated between San Diego and Tijuana. Here's a shot from ISS showing  Juarez, Mexico (left) and El Paso, Texas with the wiggly, orange illuminated border between them.

Image from ISS Expedition 26 Crew. Credit: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA-Johnson Space Center. The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

Again, the character of the two cities is remarkably different. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at nighttime views of cities from around the world.

My Cities from Space posts are the most popular ones on my blog and some of the readers here will be interested knowing that there's a new citizen science project called Cities at Night that has an amazing database of such images from the International Space Station. The project aims to teach people about light pollution and to crowd source classification of the nighttime images taken by the astronauts. Be sure to check it out.