Courtesy: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. “The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.”

This video over Central Africa and the Middle East was taken by the crew of Expedition 29 on board the International Space Station. This sequence of shots was taken October 1, 2011 from 21:20:24 to 21:41:24 GMT, on an ascending pass from just southwest of Cote d’Ivoire in Africa to southern Russia. At the beginning of the video, thunderstorms can be seen in western Africa. The first lights that are visible is along the Nile River in Egypt near the Mediterranean Sea and through Israel and Lebanon along the coast. Further down the pass and into the Middle East, the Baku Peninsula brightly sticks out into the Caspian Sea. The pass ends over southern Russia, looking northeastward toward the Aurora Borealis.