Brilliance at Night: The Americas in Darkness Wall Art Framed Canvas The bright smudges are dusty

The bright smudges are dusty cocoons containing massive embryonic stars

but create the illusion that we are peering through a window out onto the more distant sky

NGC 2023 is classified as a reflection nebula

Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)

Brilliance at Night: The Americas in Darkness Wall Art Framed Canvas The bright smudges are dustyThis image of North and South America at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet. For more such images of our planet, read Earth at Night, NASA's latest ebook that features dazzling photographs and images from space of Earths nightlights. For nearly 25 years, satellite images of