Night Flights - Spring, 2015

In April, I flew to Newark, New Jersey to attend the Northeast Astronomy Expo (NEAF) and the annual board meeting of the Astronomy Foundation. As I got closer to my destination, darkness was falling and I took advantage of my window seat to take iPhone pics of the city lights below.

According to the location info that came with the pic, the shot above shows Solcum, Pennsylvania. It was taken in twilight, while it was still light enough to see the wing of the plane, the sky and the clouds illuminated naturally.

Above, the many lights of Hackensack, New Jersey.

On our approach to Newark, we passed almost directly above the Meadowlands Racetrack. As you can see, it is crazy bright. Which makes sense if, you know, you are racing at night. I didn't see any signs of activity though, which made me wonder why all the lights were turned on. The track is bright enough at night to be seen from space - more on that in a moment.

I also had a this great, but not especially close, view of the New York City skyline. That's the Empire State Building near the left lit up in green. My geography of Manhattan is a bit weak, so I leave the identification of the other tall buildings as an exercise to the reader.

While we're here, let's check out the last two scenes from space.

Credit: The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

I used this pic in my Times Square from Space post from a few years ago, but it's worth seeing again. The photo was taken from the International Space Station & I've cropped it from the full frame and North is to the left (sorry). The Meadowlands Racetrack is easily visible as a bright oval in the lower left. Across the dark Hudson River lies the very brightest section of NYC and just to the left of that is the relatively dark rectangle of Central Park. The orange color that is virtually everywhere comes from high-pressure sodium streetlights. NYC is in the process of converting their lights from their existing orange lights to white LED. For good reasons not everybody is happy about it, and it will be interesting to see how the view from space changes as the conversion happens.

Earlier this week I had a window seat on a night flight from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to San Diego's Lindbergh Field. Naturally, I grabbed my iPhone and took pics of the city lights on this flight too.

That's the Phoenix area above. Unlike many cities that grow around many geographic features, the "Valley of the Sun" is laid out in a vast, regular grid pattern that's easily seen here. The occasional bright, white splotches of light are sports fields which are illuminated at much higher levels than other parts of the community. Such sports fields often contain unshielded light and shine light directly upwards creating glare that can be seen from inside aircraft flying at night. Such upward shining light is wasteful and a source of light pollution.

Like NYC, Phoenix is about to undergo a conversion to LED streetlights. In a couple of years the city should look completely different at night. In spite of the claims that are made, LED streetlights are likely to create more light pollution than what is already in place.

While I enjoyed seeing Phoenix at night, I was more interested in seeing the U.S. - Mexico border.

I believe that the bottom of the photo shows Winterhaven, California - located just west of Yuma, Arizona. Notice that at the top of the pic there's a community that has a straight light of light that forms an unusual looking boundary. That's likely Los Algodones, Mexico lying just south of the illuminated international border. It is unusual to see a city just stop like that in a straight line.

Here's another example:

A short while later we flew even closer to the border and had this view of Mexicali, Mexico (top) and Caliexico, California (lower right). Again, here's a city that stops long the political line and physical fence that separates two countries.

Here's how it looks from the International Space Station:

Credit: The Gateway to  Astronaut Photography of Earth

When I was a kid, I imagined that the lines of geography that we find on maps and globes were real and that you could actually see them. It turns out that my imagination wasn't too far off. The line between Mexicali and Calexico is pretty obvious at night from above.

Night Flight II

A week ago I had another opportunity to shoot some city lights from an airplane. This time my flight was from Atlanta to Tucson. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know where I was when these shots were taken but there are still some some things of interest in them.

As it turns out there is a lot that can be learned by looking a city lights from the air. Doing so from an airline isn't necessarily the best way to do it though. Some researchers are using airplanes to study city lights in a systematic way. Check out this post about the lights of Berlin from the Loss of the Night blog.  They've got a video posted there that I have embedded below that shows their night views of Berlin Germany from an airplane and from the International Space Station:

Back to my shots. They are presented in geographic order from east to west.

Looking down on some continuous roadway lighting:

Notice the brightest areas in the shot below? Yeah, it's sports lighting

Finally, two shots of Tucson:

Notice in the shot above not only the differing colors of light but also that mostly you see the reflected pools of light underneath the light poles rather than upward directed light. 

What's the brightest thing in this shot? Sports lighting, just as it is in most towns. This particular installation is putting a lot of light going not directly upward (aside from reflected light), but upward in a sideways direction. Research shows that this brightens the sky over a much larger area. That's not exactly a good thing, is it?

Night Flight

Last night I finally had the right confluence of flying at night, a window seat, cloudless skies, and having my DSLR handy. Here are some of my shots.

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/10 Sec., ISO 6400

I was on a flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Tucson when I captured these shots. They aren't as good as I was hoping for, but I hope aren't too bad. The motion of the plane (and the photographer), combined with the optically poor window glass of commercial airlines and the internal lights within the plane, made getting the shots pretty difficult.

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/25 Sec., ISO 6400

My knowledge of the Dallas/Fort Worth area is pretty limited but it is easy to pick out sports lighting. There are four fields in the shot above and one in the shot below.  Both were taken from a high enough altitude that you shouldn't be seeing glare from the fields, yet there it is - light pointing upwards. Poorly directed sports lighting contributes not only to sky glow (lighting up the underside of airplanes) but also light trespass that can disrupt neighborhoods for miles around.

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/50 Sec., ISO 6400

Much of the light in these photos (and in almost all cities) is misdirected and could be improved. Doing so would save energy, lessen the impact of light on the nighttime environment, improve visibility and reduce light pollution. To learn more, check out the website of the International Dark-Sky Association.

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/30 Sec., ISO 6400

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/10 Sec., ISO 6400

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/10 Sec., ISO 6400

What is this?

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/10 Sec., ISO 6400, cropped.

From 30,000 it is difficult to tell, especially since I don't know where the plane was when the shot was taken.

Unfortunately as we came towards Tucson all electronic devices had to be turned off.

Canon 3Ti 50mm 1/10 Sec., ISO 6400

I only got this one, bad shot (above). Sometime I hope to get some good night shots here, but last night wasn't it.

If you like any of these shots you check out my Cities From Space posts, they are the most popular on my blog (much more popular than my Star Trek posts which will continue again soon).