Cairo’s Colorful Nightscape

A nadir photo shows a network of yellow and white artificial lights across Cairo and Giza, centered in the image. The left and right sides of the image show orange light arranged in more geometric patterns. Patches of dark, unlit areas dot the scene, especially toward the top and bottom.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a sequence of nighttime photos of the Greater Cairo region in Egypt. Four images were stitched together to create this panoramic scene stretching west and east of the Nile River.

City lights spread outward from the center of Cairo, which lies on the east bank of the Nile River. Winding through the middle of the scene like a dark ribbon, the Nile flows south to north and eventually empties into the Mediterranean Sea (north of this image). The river supplies water to the cities and towns along its banks.

To the north of Cairo and Giza, the Nile fans into a large delta, creating an oasis for farming. The small clusters of lights belong to towns within the delta, while the darker areas represent regions of dense agriculture.

On the right side of the image, bright lights illuminate Cairo International Airport, which contrasts with the dark desert terrain surrounding it. On the outskirts of Giza, agricultural land and desert comprise the dark areas. The Pyramids of Giza are nestled between brightly lit areas and the satellite cities farther west. Satellite cities are urban centers positioned within a reasonable commute of larger cities, featuring their own town centers and forming an integral part of the metro area.

The newer satellite cities, such as New Cairo and 6 October City, are part of the Greater Cairo region’s expansion over the past several decades. The orange-hued lights of these newer developments, likely stemming from sodium lightbulbs, highlight the distinct radial and angular patterns of these planned layouts.

Nighttime photos taken from the space station using handheld digital cameras provide a rich, publicly available collection of high-resolution imagery of city lights. This dataset is useful for identifying detailed city structure and urban changes over time.

Urban expansion in the Greater Cairo region has been documented in both daytime and nighttime images taken by humans in space since 1965. A previous article about Cairo at night featured a photograph taken in 2014, when the Greater Cairo region was home to just over 20 million people. Between December 2014 and July 2023, the area’s population grew by more than 1 million people.

Astronaut photographs ISS069-E-37411-37414 were acquired on July 26, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters. They are provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The images were taken by a member of the Expedition 69 crew. The images have 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 Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS II Contract at NASA-JSC.