On Wednesday, September 23, 2015, an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) clicked and shared the panorama photo of the India-Pakistan border at night. This image is captured by using a Nikon D4 digital camera with a 28mm lens. The photograph shows one of the few places on Earth where an international boundary can be seen at night. The winding border between Pakistan and India is lit by security lights that have a distinct orange tone.
Last month, NASA’s Earth Observatory released a night time picture of the international border between India and Pakistan. The port city of Karachi is the bright cluster of lights facing the Arabian Sea, which looks completely black.
With many dots and the large clusters of yellow, the border between the two nations can be viewed as a clear-cut brightly lit orange perimeter. This is because of the security lights along the length of the international border.
Almost 2,000 kms out of a total of 3,300 kms of the border is floodlit. This information has come from the Government of India that spends a huge amount of electricity and diesel for the lights.
The Radcliffe Line comes between the two nuclear-armed countries. It was established in 1947 when the two countries were formed. Both nations have several troops posted all along the border particularly in the Jammu and Kashmir region. There are also hundreds of kilometers of roads along the length of the border.
Blobs of yellow light on the Indo-Gangetic plain show many cities (big and small) located in North India as well as in northern Pakistan. The major highways can also be seen. Also seen are tall and partially covered with clouds and snow the Himalayan range.
The verdant vegetation of the Indus River Valley differs very much with the arid terrain surrounding it. Also the bright lights of Pakistan’s commercial hub Karachi can be seen.
The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet.
