(Click image for a wider, high-resolution view.) Astronaut photograph acquired on April 17, 2022 from the International Space Station.
Shadows from skyscrapers and other city buildings give the photograph a 3D look.
Orbiting over the Gulf of Maine, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station looked southward to capture this oblique photograph of New York City. Shadows from skyscrapers and other city buildings give the photograph a sense of three-dimensionality.
The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, an important historic immigration hub into the United States, are within the New York Harbor at the top of the photograph (south). The harbor, busy with ship traffic, is the terminus of the Hudson River that forms a segment of the border between New Jersey and New York.
Four out of the five boroughs of New York are visible in this detailed photograph as well as New Jersey neighborhoods. City structures differ between the boroughs with varying building heights across the city. On Manhattan, the Financial District and Midtown hosts skyscrapers, while neighborhoods like Upper Manhattan and East Village have a grid-like pattern of shorter buildings. The boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, and mainland New Jersey, have skyscrapers mostly situated near major areas of transport such as ports, large roadways, and bridges. Curved freeways connect city areas, neighborhoods, and parks.
Captured from the space station on May 5, 2014, this detailed image reveals the narrow shape of Manhattan located between the Hudson River and the East River, a feature familiar to crews on the International Space Station. The ragged line of shadow cast by the Palisades cliff crosses the bottom of the image. Wharves jut into the rivers, bridges are visible mainly because of the shadows they cast, and the grid pattern of major roads stands out. On the island of Manhattan itself, the main visual features are Central Park (with playing fields as white dots) and two darker zones where the tallest buildings in Midtown East and the Financial District cast strong shadows, even in this early afternoon view.
Central Park, the large, vegetated rectangle in the lower center of the image, is one of the most visited urban parks in the United States with approximately 40 million annual visitors. Across the Hudson River, New Jersey parks, conservation areas, and wetlands line the Hackensack River.
Other astronaut photographs of Manhattan have been taken over the years including a daytime photo from 2014 (above), and a nighttime photo from 2013 (below).
One of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station exposed this 400 millimeter night image of the greater New York City metropolitan area on March 23, 2013. For orientation purposes, note that Manhattan runs horizontal through the frame from left to the midpoint. Central Park is just a little to the left of frame center. Credit: NASA
Astronaut photograph ISS067-E-18580 was acquired on April 17, 2022, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 1150 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 67 crew. 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. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.
