| New York City and East Coast City Lights: Bright city lights
along the coastline and interior delineate the eastern coast of the
United States at night. Known as the “city that never sleeps,” New
York City with its population of more than 8 million residents (in
2000) is the largest and brightest metropolitan area along the coast.
The metropolitan area straddles the Hudson River and spreads eastward
over Long Island. Philadelphia is the second largest city in this
image, situated south of New York (lower left in this scene). One of
the most richly historic of U.S. cities, Philadelphia is where the
Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The crew of the
International Space Station took this image from a vantage point well
to the northeast of the cities, with the camera pointed westward back
towards New York City and the coast. The result is that the
perspective is highly distorted but still recognizable. Low clouds
have formed over the waters of the Atlantic and have settled into
some of the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains to the northwest. |
