A nighttime view of Liege, Belgium, photographed by an Expedition 34 crew member on December 8, 2012. The brightly lit core of the Liege urban area appears to lie at the center of a network of roadways extending outwards into the rural, and relatively dark, Belgium countryside. For a sense of scale the distance from left to right is approximately 70 kilometers. The image was taken using the European Space Agency's Nodding mechanism, also known as the NightPod. NightPod is an electro-mechanical mount system designed to compensate digital cameras for the motion of the space station relative to Earth. The primary mission goal was to take high-resolution, long exposure digital imagery of Earth from the station's Cupola, particularly cities at night. (Photo by NASA via The Atlantic)
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