Earth at Night
NASA's Black Marble: city lights tracing coastlines, rivers, and a century of settlement — the human planet, after dark.
Drag to spin — this is what yours looks like folded.
About this globe
NASA's Black Marble: a cloud-free composite of the Earth's city lights from the VIIRS satellite sensor. Light traces people — coastlines, river valleys, and railways glow, while deserts, forests and oceans stay dark.
Find the Nile delta burning bright against black desert, and the sharp line where the lights of South Korea stop.
How the data was captured
Captured by the VIIRS 'day/night band' on the Suomi NPP weather satellite — a sensor sensitive enough to detect a single ship's lights at sea. The map composites the clearest, moonless nights across all of 2016.
Download free — pick your paper size
Print at 100% scale. Cut along solid lines, fold along dashed lines, glue the tabs. Your PDF can take up to a minute to prepare — hang tight after clicking.
In the US? Print the A4 file and choose “fit to page” — it scales cleanly onto Letter paper.
Sharing this globe?
Free for personal use, classrooms, and gifts — not for resale. If you post it on your site or share it online, please credit Folding Globes with a link. Copy-paste blurb:
"Earth at Night" folding paper globe — free from Folding Globes, https://foldingglobes.com/globes/earth-at-night · Imagery: NASA Earth Observatory Black Marble
Make it yours
Every paid shape also lets you pin your own places on the map.