An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this nighttime photo of Namibia and South Africa. Taken at a highly oblique angle with a short focal length lens, the photo reflects the sweeping vistas seen by the station’s crew orbiting above Earth. Extending from Namibian cities along the coastline to a cluster of major South African cities illuminated near the horizon, the photo represents more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of the southern African landscape.
Moonlight illuminates the tops of offshore clouds in the foreground. The cloud-free zone along the coast results from the persistent upwelling of deep, cold Atlantic water related to the Benguela Current. This image shows how the zone of colder water suppresses cloud formation and therefore rainfall. The long-term effect is a very dry climate along the coast, which in turn has led to the accumulation of the Namib Desert with its “sand sea” and famous dune fields, which are often photographed by astronauts.
Population density in southern Africa mirrors the region’s rainfall distribution, with small and sparsely populated communities along the hyper-arid coast and major groups of cities inland where rainfall is plentiful. Southern Africa’s largest river, the Orange River, is marked by the lights of several towns that draw water from its channel.
Many clusters of lights in this view are related to towns whose economies are based on mining. In the foreground, Oranjemund and neighboring towns lie at the point where the Orange River enters the Atlantic Ocean. These towns, along with the small coastal town of Lüderitz, are renowned diamond mining centers. The twin towns of Springbok and Okiep, farther south, are centers of copper mining.
The large cluster of lights near the horizon comes from cities in the wetter inland part of South Africa. The largest grouping is the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging conglomeration of cities, where more than 8 million people live. The origin of this major industrial region was the rich gold fields of the Witwatersrand. Rustenburg, the city farthest north in the cluster of lights, is centered on South Africa’s rich platinum mines. The city of Gaborone is Botswana’s capital and a major center for diamond mining corporations. Bloemfontein (top right) is the capital city of the Free State province of South Africa.
Astronaut photograph ISS071-E-523401 was acquired on August 21, 2024, with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 50 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 71 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Justin Wilkinson, Texas State University, Jacobs JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.
