City lights shine brighter during the holidays in the United States when compared with the rest of the year, as shown using a new analysis of daily data from the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite.
Dark green pixels are areas where lights are 50 percent brighter, or more, during December.
Because snow reflects so much light, the researchers could only analyze snow-free cities. They focused on the U.S. West Coast from San Francisco and Los Angeles, and cities south of a rough imaginary line from St. Louis to Washington, D.C.
Credit: Jesse Allen, NASA’s Earth Observatory Larger image
