Cities at night: Extraordinary Rosetta images

ESA's Rosetta has returned extraordinary images captured 13 November 2007 as the comet-chasing spacecraft completed a critical Earth swing-by at 45 000 kilometres per hour.

The images - captured by Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument - comprise a view of the Earth's night side including urban regions in Asia, Africa and Europe, and a view of the Earth's limb over Antarctica.

The first image was taken with the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera (WAC) at 19:45 CET, about 2 hours before the closest approach of the spacecraft to Earth. At the time, Rosetta was about 80 000 km above the Indian Ocean where the local time approached midnight (the angle between Sun, Earth and Rosetta was about 160°).

Islands of artificial lights created by human habitation are sparsely distributed over the part of the globe seen in the picture.

Source: ESA