Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s photos from space capture cities before Earth Hour

25 Mar 2013

Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Cmdr Chris Hadfield via Twitter

Cmdr Chris Hadfield wasn’t able to photograph Earth Hour efforts from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on Saturday as he had hoped, but instead he tweeted spectacular nighttime photographs of cities just before the event.

Earth Hour took place from 8.30-9.30pm on Saturday, when people and organisations around the world dimmed their lights for 60 minutes to draw awareness to the need for action on climate change.

The Canadian astronaut had been hoping to capture the event from space.

“Good Morning, Earth! I’ll try and photograph people’s efforts during Earth Hour today. It’s our planet, let’s each help a bit,” he had tweeted to his more than half a million followers on Twitter.

His next tweet, however, revealed a change of plans.

“As it turns out, orbital mechanics don’t support seeing lights out efforts. But a richness of ‘before’ night photos coming for inspiration.”

And here they are:

Baltimore

Baltimore, Maryland

Boston

Boston, Massachusetts

New York

The Big Apple – New York City

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, under a bit of cloud

San Francisco

San Francisco, California, framing the bay

Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch, New Zealand. Hadfield snapped this photo just after Earth Hour ended

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com