That´s pretty cool. Gives me a good idea where to go when the lights go out, so to speak.

I could see my house from up there...

Just goes to show how little we really are.

It doesn`t look like we are using enough energy.....

Unfortunately, this is far from the most revealing/useful of the nighttime mosaics. The contrasts are far starker. And sorry, I don´t have URLs for better ones at hand. A quick stop at APOD should lead to them.

As for the image, and more so for the better ones, which show far more illumination, several things template more or less directly on top of the brightest areas. They include: low infant mortality; long lifespans; higher standards of living; political liberty; economic liberty; higher GDPs; educational achievement; peaceful and productive relations with like-minded neighbors and similar nations across the globe.

Oppressive, tyrannical, benighted nations are dark in many ways, not just in their literal light. Cuba? Looks like a string of islands [compare to Florida]; South Korea looks like an island, as North Korea has just two "significant" lighted areas [not to mention a slave population that´s malnutritionally 3 inches or more shorter than their Southern cousins]; Israel looks like the whole country is one giant World Series night game [Egypt is bright only in the West-connected areas of commerce along the Nile], it´s a veritable map.

[cont.]

Well, I hear the clamor already: "But, but, but, Mr. Veritas, the US doesn´t really have great education or infant mortality, to name two problems. Right?"

Wrong. Very wrong, Grasshopper. You have either bought the Left´s self-hating propaganda, or you have not looked past the surface to find the facts.

Infant mortality? One example: infants are not recorded as "live births" in Switzerland ´til 24 hours after they´re born. That skews infant mortality very significantly.

And it is a huge mistake to take the entire US, whole, in such statistical comparisons. Many [most?] countries are far more homogeneous [being smaller than the US contributes to that]. I´d want US statistics split out into at least three groups: a. "conventional," or "old-school," productive and decent Americans; b. a population cohort that has adopted an incredibly-self-destructive sub-culture [crime; illegitimacy; dependency on the productive; flash over value; self-segregation; excuse-making; rewards demanded and extorted for identity rather than earned through achievement; blaming, and preying upon, the productive "other" (Group A); and so on]; and c. a population cohort that shares a number of factors with Group B, as well as including many illegal aliens.

Groups B and C can hardly be considered "assimilated Americans." Look to Group A for the real statistics on America. Thanks.

Whole world spinning plus larger photos.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/earth-at-night.html

Some commented about the lights in Australia.
The lights are wildfires.

Nice youtube video of the Earth at night.
http://tinyurl.com/apyr4j7

What caught my eye was the difference between East vs West of the Mississippi.

Lack of water mainly plus the Rocky Mountains.