I created this page in response to messages circulating about the beautiful image from NASA of the Earth's lights at night found here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg

I was disturbed that several messages would incorrectly identify certain cities on that map. As most of these mistakes were about European cities, and as that's the area of the world with which I'm most familiar geographically, I thought I'd create a map identifying some of the cities to help people read it better.

Please note that there is much more to the large image by NASA than the specific location of particular cities. I just identified some of them on this map because people were getting them wrong.

Geography education is not of much focus anywhere, but it is particularly weak in the United States which is not helped by the fact that most universities no longer have Geography Departments. It would be interesting to see a dissertation written on why these departments disappeared in the U.S. compared to their continued existence elsewhere.