Lights of Mankind

Friday, 12 June 2015

Lights of Mankind – it’s one of those books which you pick up as a remainder and you think ‘why didn’t this get more attention?’ Views from the International Space Station – a few years ago I went down to Baikonur in Kazakhstan to see a tourist go up to the station for a couple of weeks. They’re views at night, like the cover photograph with the brightly lit Nile River running up to Cairo and then Alexandria at the mouth of Nile, where it spills into the Mediterranean Sea. Off to the right, to the east, is brightly lit Israel.

Or this view of the Straits of Hormuz, that strategically situated neck at the southern end of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. To the right are the bright lights of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the other affluent centres of the UAE. Further south – towards the top of the photograph – things are pretty bright in Oman as well. Across the Gulf, on the eastern side, ie to the left, there are also lots of lights in Iran. If the photo went further to east it wouldn’t be so well lit in Afghanistan.