Before the Dawn in America’s Heartland

What happened

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station seized the opportunity to capture this wide-angle photo at 4:54 a.m. With hardly a cloud in sight, astronauts had a sweeping view of nighttime lights in the U.S.

Central Daylight Time (09:54 Universal Time), with illuminated cities large and small arrayed across the darkened landscape. Mid-sized cities—including Indianapolis, Indiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Louisville, Kentucky—and their interconnections along state and interstate highways also shine brightly.

Above the web of nighttime lights and Earth’s lower atmosphere, a diffuse layer of green and orange is visible along the horizon to the left. This band of light is airglow , produced when sunlight strikes atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere and causes them to eject photons .

Earth Observatory 3 min read Image of the Day for November 4, 2026 With hardly a cloud in sight, astronauts had a sweeping view of nighttime lights in the U.S. View more Images of the Day: Nov 3, 2026 Instruments: ISS — Digital Camera Collections: Astronaut Photography Earth at Night Topics: Earth at Night Urban Development The predawn hours brought clear skies over much of the eastern United States on October 18, 2026.

To the right, light from the Sun arcs across the horizon; sunrise was about an hour away on the East Coast and about two hours away in Chicago. Astronaut photos and other remote sensing observations of nighttime lights are scientifically valuable for tracking changes in the built environment.

For example, Chicago's lightscape appears a homogeneous pale yellow in the wide view above. But in detailed photos, like the one below, a range of colors stemming from different types of lighting is discernible.