This photo depicting the day and night regions of Earth is a digital composite, not real - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 21, 2023
A photo depicting Earth’s night and day regions at a time, over African and European continents, is being shared on social media, claiming it as a rare pic. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Calim: A rare photo depicting the Earth’s day and night regions.
Fact: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) described this photo as ‘a digital composite of archived images taken by several Earth-orbiting satellites and ocean-faring ships.‘ Hence the claim made in the post is Misleading.
The line that separates the sunlit side and the night side regions of the Earth is called the Terminator. This photo is an example of the terminator line from the space. This is depicted in the viral photo.
We conducted a reverse image search on the internet to check if this is a rare picture of the Terminator line on Earth. This search led us to an article published by NASA in 2003, which contained a viral photo with a caption that reads ‘A Digital Sunset Over Europe and Africa.’
In the article, NASA explained that a single spacecraft or an astronaut did not capture the image. ‘It is a digital composite of archived images taken by several Earth-orbiting satellites and ocean-faring ships.’ NASA wrote.
According to NASA, such images can be generated for any location on the Earth using the Earth and Moon Viewer web tool. Such images are used by scientists to ‘interpret complex data and communicate their understanding to others.’ Read this article by NASA to learn more about how this image was made.
To sum up, this photo which shows day and night regions of the Earth at a time is a digital composite, not real.