Airglow and city lights come together in this image. (Image credit:  NASA/Expedition 72 crew)

At 2:23 am Eastern time on March 19, 2025, an astronaut aboard the International Space station (ISS) captured a striking nighttime view of Earth, where shimmering moonlight dances across dark ocean waters while clusters of city lights outline the Florida Peninsula, the Caribbean, and parts of Central America.

Dense clusters of illumination trace major population centers, including the bright corridor from Miami to Fort Lauderdale along Florida's southeastern coast, the Tampa–St. Petersburg area on the Gulf Coast, and the Orlando metropolitan region near the center of the peninsula. Smaller but still discernible patterns of light mark the Florida Keys, Nassau in the Bahamas, and Havana and other cities across Cuba.

What is it?

Besides the stunning city lights, what sets this image apart is the presence of moonglint, the nighttime counterpart to sunglint. Much like sunlight reflecting off the ocean's surface during the day, moonglint occurs when moonlight reflects off water at just the right angle to reach the observer.

In this case, the observer was a crewmember on the ISS, orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth. At the time, the moon was in a waning phase and about 78% illuminated, bright enough to produce a concentrated reflection across the sea, especially near the Florida Keys and Cuba.

The photograph was taken using a Nikon Z9 digital camera with a 28-millimeter lens, giving a wide field of view similar to that of the human eye. This perspective allows viewers to appreciate the curvature of the planet, accentuated by a thin, faint green layer of airglow along the horizon, a reminder of Earth's atmosphere glowing softly against the darkness of space.

Where is it?

This photo was taken aboard the ISS, around 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.