Ahhh, Christmas lights from space

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

It must be tough flying a sleigh through the cold December air every Christmas, but at least we can sleep easy knowing Santa is getting a great light show.

A newly-released NASA map of the United States shows just how much more light can be seen from space as a result of all those holiday light displays on the houses and lawns of modern-day Clark Griswolds.

Using data from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, NASA scientists saw that evening lights in the U.S. are 20 to 50 percent brighter between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, when compared to those lights the rest of the year.

“When we started looking at the data at night over the United States, we were expecting to see a lot of stability in the nighttime lights,” said Miguel Román, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We were really surprised to see this vibrant increase in activity during the holidays, particularly around the areas in the suburbs where you have a lot of single-family homes with a lot of yard space to put in lights.”

In 2012, NOAA, which operates Suomi NPP with NASA, put out the “Earth at Night” maps that were actually composites made by using monthly averages of information compiled on nights without any clouds or moonlight.

The new investigation uses a sophisticated algorithm formula, developed at Goddard that ignores moonlight, clouds and airborne dust to be able to isolate city lighting on an everyday basis. The information from this formula makes for high-quality satellite imagery that researchers can use to follow how people light up the night and utilize energy.

The NASA investigation revealed that nighttime light intensity the surburbs increased 30 to 50 percent, while urban areas increased by about 30 percent. Since snow is such a good reflector of light, the NASA team was only able to consider snow-free cities in the southern UD and Puerto Rico.

“It’s a near ubiquitous signal. Despite being ethnically and religiously diverse, we found that the U.S. experiences a holiday increase that is present across most urban communities,” Román said. “These lighting patterns are tracking a national shared tradition.”

The researchers also saw a nighttime light increase in Middle Eastern countries that corresponded with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – a time when Muslims fast during the day and have meals and social events at night. The researchers saw that in many countries, urban lights increased by about 50 percent. This effect was more pronounced in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but less pronounced in other countries, like Turkey.

“Even within majority Muslim populations, there are a lot of variations,” said Eleanor Stokes, a NASA Jenkins Graduate Fellow. “What we’ve seen is that these lighting patterns track cultural variation within the Middle East.”

The NASA team broke down Ramadan light increases across socio-economic barriers, and found that poorer neighborhoods showed less variation over the entire month. However, for the Eid al-Fitr celebration at the end of Ramadan – light increases were seen across all groups.

“Whether you’re rich or poor, or religious or not, everybody in Egypt is celebrating the Eid, or the end of Ramadan,” Román said.

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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113303062/ahhh-christmas-lights-from-space-121914/