Scandinavia At Night
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of southern Scandinavia just before midnight on April 3, 2015. Prominent features include a green aurora to the north, the blackness of the Baltic Sea (lower right), and clouds (top right) and snow (in Norway) illuminated by the full Moon.
City lights clearly show the coastline of the Skagerrak and Kattegat seaway that separates Denmark from its neighbors to the north and leads into the Baltic Sea. The largest light clusters on the seaway are the capital cities of Oslo and Copenhagen. Cities facing the Baltic are the Polish port of Gdansk and the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Smaller cities in northern Germany also trace the Baltic coastline (lower right).
Scandinavia During The Day
An astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) took this panorama looking aft of the spacecraft (backwards along the orbital path) as the Sun was setting over the North Sea. Seen from the ISS, the Sun’s reflection point moves quickly across the landscape, momentarily lighting up water bodies.
this fleeting view from June 15, 2014, the coast of southern Norway is outlined near the horizon. The brightest reflection highlights the narrow sea passage known as the Skagerrak—revealing the thin tip of Denmark. Numerous small lakes in southern Sweden appear at image center, and scattered clouds cast complex shadows on the southern Baltic Sea. The sweeping curves of the sand spit on the Polish coast and the long barrier islands on the Russian coast appear in the foreground, at the edge of the Sun’s reflection disc.
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