What City Lights Reveal About Us

The science

Seen from space at night, the Earth tells a story no daytime image can. The dataset behind this print comes from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information, which compiled annual composites of night-time lights observed from satellites at a resolution of 50–100 meters per pixel – fine enough to pick out individual cities, highways and gas flares.

Night light has become a genuine research tool. Social scientists use it as a proxy for economic development, because brighter regions are, on average, wealthier ones. Economists have used it to estimate GDP where official statistics are unreliable, and to watch economies grow or collapse from orbit.

How we turned it into a print

We rendered the light against deep darkness, so the composition reads as a dramatic statement from across the room and reveals detail up close. The patterns are unmistakable: the dense blaze of Western Europe, the luminous American East Coast, the sharp light-and-dark contrast on the Korean peninsula, and the Nile drawn as a single glowing thread through the Egyptian desert – almost the entire population of a country traced in light.

The print

From our Spectrum collection, The World by Night Light is printed on premium paper in 70x50 cm and 100x70 cm. Data source: U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information.