Google Map of the Night

Bostonist used all the cyan in the color cartridge (which, at the time, still came bundled together) some five-odd years ago when we thought it really important to print ourselves the NASA Astronomy photo of the day from November 27, 2000. Type “earthlights” into google and the NASA image is still the first hit. In the web 2.0 world it was only a matter of time before someone showed us what a google map would look like at night. Peter Pesti did just that. 85,000 plus people have visited his mash up, checking out what the night brings to their neighborhood. Well, neighborhood might be a stretch. The resolution of the original Earth Lights image from NASA doesn’t have the resolution to offer the same zoom you can get in the daytime. That is to say you can see Boston on the map as a bright spot, but if you want to see street lights you’ll have to see them in daytime google.