Pictures Of Deserts

International Space Station pictures show how Earth is lit up at night

The world's most famous river glows in the night sky in this breath-taking photograph from space.

Astronauts were able to use unmanned satellites and space stations to capture the incredible lights coming from thousands of settlements along the banks of The Nile, in Egypt.

Even though parts of the country have yet to receive electricity or running water, the twinkling lights show how many people have set up their homes along the river. Just a few miles from the glowing snakes is the darkness of he practically uninhabited deserts that lay beyond.

The picture is among several others that were taken to provide a space tour of the planet Earth lit up at night as it has never been seen before.

As electrified civilisation has spread across the Earth, human settlements now light up the surface of the planet more than at any time in history - as the pictures dramatically show.

The images were taken by astronaut Paolo Nespoli and unmanned satellites floating 230 miles miles above the Earth.  

The UK and Ireland are so developed that by night they resemble islands of light floating in the dark Atlantic Ocean.

A shot taken above the English Channel shows how France and England are like electricity grids ablaze with billions of volts of power.

The Italian peninsula is a neon boot kicking the lit-up island of Sicily while Montreal is a fiery heart spreading in all directions.

The trio began their mission with the departure of the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on in December 2010 and spent six months on the ISS working on microgravity experiments.

They landed in Kazakhstan on May 24, days before Endeavour concluded its final mission on June 1. Endeavour was on the next-to-last mission of Nasa's 30-year space shuttle programme. Nasa's shuttle fleet is retiring after one last flight next month with a load of supplies for the station.

Darkness: The north coast of Libya - now the seen of relentless fighting - appears calm by night with a large concentration of settlements around on of the main oil ports and other buildings further west but virtually nothing on the mainland

Commander Mark Kelly, Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori and Endeavour's four other astronauts - Gregory Johnson, Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff and Andrew Feustel - had returned to Earth after 16 days in space of repairs at International Space Station.

The crew installed a $2billion cosmic ray detector, an extension beam and a platform full of spare parts, enough to keep the station operating in the shuttle-less decade ahead.

Most Amazing And Wonderful Desert Pictures | Digital Art, Photography

A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres (10 in) per year,or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation.In the Köppen climate classification system, deserts are classed as BWh (hot desert) or BWk (temperate desert). In the Thornthwaite climate classification system, deserts would be classified as arid megathermal climates.

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