The Iberian Peninsula

This image from the International Space Station shows the Iberian Peninsula including Spain and Portugal at night.

The lights from human settlements reveal where the major towns and activity are. The large mass of light in the middle is Madrid, Spain’s capital city. The Iberian coastline is heavily populated with Valencia and Barcelona along the Mediterranean Sea prominent at the bottom right of this photo.

Portugal to the west shows similar lighting with the coast from Lisboa to Porto a haze of light.

This astronaut-image taken from 400 km above Earth shows how close the Iberian Peninsula is to Morocco. A thin line of blackness – the Strait of Gibraltar – separates the two.

Another thin line stands out in this picture – Earth’s atmosphere, the green shroud that surrounds and protects our world and the people and animals that live on it.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Portugal and Spain

Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) captured this image on 8 April 2012 at 13:05 CEST. The image was transmitted in Ka-band to ESA/ESRIN though direct transmission via Artemis, the ESA Data Relay satellite. The image, which is of nominal quality, shows Portugal and Spain. It is the last Envisat data transmitted via Ka-band before the communication anomaly affected the Envisat satellite.

Photo credit: ESA

Paris to Portugal

European lights seen by André Kuipers from space. Portugal is to the right of the image, and Paris is the glowing light on the left of the image.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA