How Boston Compares to Other Cities When Seen from Space

A new database assembles photos taken from the International Space Station.

In January, International Space Station astronaut Chris Hadfield wowed Boston by posting a photo he snapped of the city lit up at night:

via Chris Hadfield on Twitter

via Chris Hadfield on Twitter

Boston’s not the only city Hadfield has captured. He’s actually building a library of images of cities all over the world, in addition to capturing photos of cool land formations, weather phenomena and anything else that makes your eyes bug out, all of which he sends out on his must-follow Twitter account.

David MacLean teaches computer mapping at the Nova Scotia Community College, and he’s such a fan of Hadfield that, he tells the Ottawa Citizen, he thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a catalog of where they are?” Thus do we get this database which allows you to zoom around the world and click on photos of cities Hadfield’s captured. Here’s a screenshot:

database

Playing around with it, we’re already having fun noticing the kinds of things that can be seen from space in other cities like, say, Central Park:

nyc

Boston measures up to its peers pretty nicely, but by all means, see for yourself. [via The Atlantic Cities]