# NASA - NASA Sees Holiday Lights from Space uU0u0LRTNSk

It’s official — our holiday lights are so bright we can see them from space. Thanks to the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite, a joint mission between NASA and NOAA, scientists are presenting a new way of studying satellite data that can illustrate patterns in holiday lights, both during Christmas and the Holy Month of Ramadan. These new tools can provide new insights into how energy consumption behaviors vary across different cultural settings.

A note about the data: Because snow reflects so much light, the researchers could only analyze snow-free cities. They focused on the U.S. West Coast from San Francisco and Los Angeles, and cities south of a rough imaginary line from St. Louis to Washington, D.C.

Additional Christmas lights footage courtesy http://www.fairfaxchristmaslights.com

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/HolidayLights.html

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html

Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

Or find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

Or find us on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/72157649384170588/

- Kind: Short
- Year: 2014
- Runtime: 4 min
- By: NASA Goddard
- Genres: Space
- Archive: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_-_NASA_Sees_Holiday_Lights_from_Space_uU0u0LRTNSk.webm)
- Licence or status: Public domain (as the archive states it)
- Credit: NASA Goddard
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/commons/96296021?play=1)