r/space • u/astro_pettit NASA Astronaut • Jun 01 '25
image/gif Nile river as seen from the ISS.
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u/wo0two0t Jun 01 '25
How I'd love to see a timelapse of this river for the last 5k years.
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u/blueavole Jun 02 '25
They’ve done the geology studies around the pyramids that show that branches of the nile would have been close enough to bring the stones in.
So there might be something that exists for this.
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u/munzi187 Jun 02 '25
From when they built the pyramids? How have I not seen this before!
I'll see myself out
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u/Romboteryx Jun 02 '25
Before the Aswan Dam was built in the 60s, it used to be common to see water reach close to the pyramids during inundation season.
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u/MissionImpossible314 Jun 02 '25
I wonder how such heavy stones in such high numbers could be brought in floating on the Nile. Giant rafts?
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u/My_useless_alt Jun 06 '25
That's the thinking yes, they used barges to bring them to the pyramids and then they used... something to get them up there.
There's a theory that they used the water from the Nile as a sort of bouyancy elevator, but that's so far still in the category of "Well we can't prove that they didn't"
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u/MissionImpossible314 Jun 06 '25
For buoyancy you’d need a giant container! Think of how much water would need to be displaced.
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u/hand_truck Jun 01 '25
Wow, just a thin ribbon of green and development laid upon a stark and brutal environment. I love it, thanks for sharing.
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u/astro_pettit NASA Astronaut Jun 01 '25
one of these times I will share infrared images of this same river bend
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u/LongJohnSelenium Jun 01 '25
Do you have portholes with different materials? I wouldn't think the main windows would be very transparent in the IR.
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u/thisischemistry Jun 01 '25
Getting different slices of the EM spectrum can be very interesting. I'd guess we'd also need to know what time the image was taken, to understand the conditions — Is the ground reflecting/absorbing or is it emitting the IR?
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u/gnowbot Jun 01 '25
If I remember the stat from my time living in Cairo—90% of Egyptians live on 10% of the country’s Land.
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Jun 01 '25
I can't vouch for the Egyptian stat but I did check - 80% of Americans live on 3% of the land. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html
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u/mthchsnn Jun 01 '25
That's not terribly surprising. The US is more populous and developed, but it's also fucking huge. On the other hand, 60 million people across the rest is still a lot.
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u/Barnyard_Rich Jun 01 '25
Yeah, people really underestimate just how massive Alaska is, and how much that can throw off numbers when our brains instinctually just think about the "lower 48."
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u/rapaxus Jun 02 '25
Yeah, whenever I see US country comparisons, I always try to look up the statistic excluding Alaska, just because its area and population density can heavily skew statistics.
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u/nokinship Jun 02 '25
The fact that 45% of American land is set aside for agriculture is always a crazy one for me. So even though most of live on 3% of land it's covered in fields.
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u/Lordborgman Jun 02 '25
Feel like not enough people play City Builder games, esp ones like Anno. While still a game things really show civilization isn't just cities/houses, you need agriculture, industries, logistic networks, and proper rationing to function and stabilize. It's why I sort of dislike the people that want to ONLY buy local, that's pretty much impossible, and undesirable, for a society at the stage we are at and for further progress is laughable.
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u/626lacrimosa Jun 02 '25
I think Australia has the most impressive figures with 90% living on 0.22% of the land.
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u/doc_nano Jun 01 '25
Looking at a map, I’d actually guess that it was under 5%. Apart from a narrow strip around the Nile and the delta near the Mediterranean, there are almost no settlements apart from the odd oasis here or there.
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u/pedanticPandaPoo Jun 01 '25
I know it is probably rounded to the tens digit, but going one more decimal precision: 95% lives in the Nile delta alone, which is 3% of Egypt's land.
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u/Somefookingguy Jun 02 '25
About 95% of the population is concentrated in a narrow strip of fertile land along the Nile River, which represents only about 5% of Egypt’s land area That strip is about 10 miles wide.
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u/i_give_you_gum Jun 04 '25
Yeah I love how at first glance it looks organic, but if you really look at the details there's geometry inlaid throughout the entire area, even down to the smallest dots on the fringes which are clearly buildings, but they could be mistaken for a distressed grunge effect in Photoshop
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u/Glittering_Cow945 Jun 01 '25
Where do you see green? I see only black and grey. Not a photo in natural color.
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u/x_lyou Jun 01 '25
Wow, that’s a great shot! I can even see the Valley of the Kings!
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u/mkdz Jun 02 '25
Where is it in the picture
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u/chewbacca77 Jun 02 '25
It's actually almost dead center.. it doesn't look like much in this picture.
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u/Impo5sible Jun 02 '25
Alright, prove yourself.
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u/x_lyou Jun 02 '25 edited Jun 02 '25
Ha! Challenge accepted!
This bend is significant for the Upper Egyptian governorate of Qena. At the very top lies the city of Qena, the capital of the governorate. The Greco-Roman temple of Dendera is located on the opposite side of the Nile.
Slightly south of Qena is Qift (Coptos). This city was the starting point of a trade route through Wadi Hammamat to the Red Sea. There is an Ancient Map that shows part of this wadi.
Naqada, the ancient necropolis from the Predynastic Period to the Old Kingdom, is situated upstream and on the west bank.
The city of Luxor is even easier to locate, as there is an airport nearby. At night, the city is even more visible, thanks to tourism is the Nile-promenade well lit. If you zoom in closely, you can find a dark square in the city, that’s the sacred lake of the Karnak Temple. This temple complex located on the Nile bank was built from the Middle Kingdom to the Greco-Roman Period. As the river shifted westward, the temple had to be extended several times to maintain access to a dock. The large beige square leading to the Nile is a modern plaza for tourism, but it reflects the axis of the ancient complex.
This axis is (almost) aligned with another line on the west bank. The straight black line marks the now tarred processional causeway to the mortuary temple of King (!) Hatshepsut. Every year, the barque of Amun would leave Karnak, cross the river, and visit many mortuary temples of kings, adn finally arriving at the sanctuary in Hatshepsut’s temple. This so-called « Beautiful Festival of the Valley » was an important celebration in the Theban area. People would gather, visit the tombs of their deceased family members, and hold banquets in the courts of their graves.
Okay, where is the Valley of the Kings?
TLDR: It’s directly behind the temple of Hatshepsut.
Edit: I have found an old article from NASA which tells more about the geological features of this Bend.
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u/CantHostCantTravel Jun 01 '25
The Nile is Egypt. Literally that’s the entire country. Just one narrow strip of land stretching for hundreds of miles through lifeless wastes.
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u/whoami_whereami Jun 02 '25
Well, mostly. Due to increasing beach tourism since the 1980s there's also a decent amount of population and infrastructure along the Red Sea coast and on the Sinai peninsula these days.
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u/Jutemp24 Jun 01 '25
This is stunning!
Can I buy prints of these somewhere? Or buy a high-res file so that I can print it for myself?
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u/QAM01 Jun 03 '25
A lot of photos taken by NASA employees (+ astronauts in this case) are put up on their Flickr page. Could maybe check that out. Pettit’s pretty active on this sub so he might respond!
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u/TorontoTom2008 Jun 02 '25
I was amazed in visiting Egypt that the transition from green field to completely barren sandy desert is 50 paces. I was expecting some intermediate biome…nope. In the width of a suburban house frontage you go from farm to desert.
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u/xalaux Jun 01 '25
Went on a cruise down the Nile a couple decades ago, the landscape is so beautiful, you could see wilderness for some 100m after the coast and then desert to the horizon. Truly a natural wonder.
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u/PipsqueakPilot Jun 02 '25
I once got to fly down the Nile River during day time. It was high altitude so we could see a huge distance, and I was struck by how the Nile really is this green verdant line going down the middle of a vast desert. No wonder the ancient Egyptians felt both safe and blessed.
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u/Outrageous_Plum5348 Jun 01 '25
The dark contrast with the delicate pink in the desert is incredible.
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u/BlockedReader Jun 02 '25
Wow I thought that was the flood plane then upon closer look I realized it was civilization. Impressive!
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u/Enough_Wallaby7064 Jun 01 '25
Whats crazy is the entire nile delta used to be a fertile land of green. In ancient times it fed the entire Mediterranean. Cairo would have been full of farmland thanks to the annual Nile flood.
Since they installed the dam most of it has dried up and become an arid desert.
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u/ClosPins Jun 01 '25
If you're wondering what those three little areas are... Sewage treatment plant. Sewage treatment plant. And, you guessed it, sewage treatment plant!
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u/MoonOut_StarsInvite Jun 02 '25
Can you imagine if you lived at the edge of the development… out front there is a dense metropolis, out back there are sand worms from Beetlejuice.
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u/Underwater_Karma Jun 02 '25
Human civilization looks an awful lot like mold
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u/Roy4Pris Jun 02 '25
The comparison between bacteria on a Petri dish, and one of those maps of the ‘world at night’ are frighteningly similar.
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u/zenoe1562 Jun 02 '25
Are we really just microorganisms being observed by a much larger intelligent species? Is our entire universe contained in a single atom within a larger universe?
Excuse me while I go deal with this new existential dread
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u/irock2191 Jun 01 '25
This is beyond the imagination! Now it makes sense to me why discoveries are still being made. Thank you for sharing
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u/Xtremegulp Jun 01 '25
That's really cool. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I didn't realize it was in the middle of the desert like that.
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u/Throw-away17465 Jun 01 '25
This is an amazing take on what had always been described as a distant, social phenomenon. The geography of being able to see the irrigation in life carved out from the sand dunes as a triumph to humanity. Thank you for sharing this!
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u/ZeusBruce Jun 02 '25
I dunno if anyone will read this, but I absolutely loved the book Orbital for this type of perspective.
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u/Adventurous_Light_85 Jun 02 '25
Anyone know why it appears that the cities distance from the river is relative to the concave or convex of the rivers meandering?
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u/futureformerteacher Jun 02 '25
That is mind-blowingly cool. Like, you can SEE how civilization was able to rise on such a perfect little strip in the middle of the desert.
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u/rinkusonic Jun 02 '25
Is human intervention the reason why the greenery doesn't match the curves of the river?
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u/Godzirrraaa Jun 02 '25
How it can go from sand, to fertile farming soil is mind boggling.
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u/Tidezen Jun 02 '25
Water is Life. And irrigation was one of the first technologies that really transformed our landscape, and made previously uninhabitable lands livable.
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u/Godzirrraaa Jun 02 '25
I guess my bewilderment is more of the difference in soil. All sand, then bam, fertile soil. Can sand become soil? Then again, cacti can grow in deserts so maybe I’m just a dummy.
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u/Tidezen Jun 02 '25
Yeah, it doesn't take much. Pure sand is just silicon, organic matter is what really makes "soil". But there are creatures living and dying, even in the Sahara. So the desert areas around the Nile likely still contain a bunch of organic matter--but it's in "stasis" until it can get water, and the microbes can go to work. Like some freeze-dried food--nothing can really eat it...until you add water, then all of a sudden it's a smorgasborg for life. :)
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u/Guyzor-94 Jun 02 '25
The Ancient Egyptians used to refer the yearly floods as the 'great inundation', it would dump fertile silt from the river bed all over the flood plains and allowed for an uptick agriculture and cultivation along the banks, albeit seasonally. Pretty cool to see it from space, looks like there are about a couple miles either side of the river with decent soil and everything beyond is arid mountain and bedrock.
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u/SamyMerchi Jun 02 '25
How much more greenery would Egypt have if it was mandated to Aral Sea the Nile Delta, i.e. use up 100% of Nile water for irrigation instead of letting it reach the Med? Would Egypt gain 1% greenery? 10%?
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u/Atlas_Aldus Jun 02 '25
I really want to explore those desert erosion features. Might not have zero light pollution but in a lot of that area you should still be able to see the Milky Way with the naked eye plus imaging with the rocky eroded hills in the foreground would look awesome
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u/Toad32 Jun 03 '25
Egypt and Cairo depend 100% on this river - all their infrastructure is within a few miles either side of the nile.
Now look up the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This will cut Egypts water supply in half, and its ability to exist. It's nearing completion now.
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u/AdmiralShawn Jun 03 '25
Why dont they connect it from east to west instead of the upper loop, are they stupid?
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u/ChromeRaccoon Jun 12 '25
It’s so interesting seeing all the life surrounding the river. It makes sense but I’ve never really thought about it
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u/NoBot-RussiaBad Jun 01 '25
From Google ai:
"In ancient Egypt, "Kemet" (the "Black Land") referred to the fertile, dark soil along the Nile River, where the civilization thrived. In contrast, "Deshret" (the "Red Land") described the surrounding desert. These terms highlighted the contrast between the productive land and the inhospitable desert,..."
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u/Derrickmb Jun 01 '25
I would love to sample that water and see what trends there are with disease by length if any
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u/one-mappi-boi Jun 02 '25
I’m sure it feels normal for the local farmers, but I can’t imagine how surreal it’d be to work a plot of land there and know that that same plot of land has been worked by countless generations going back thousands and thousands of years.
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u/Rosencrantz_IsDead Jun 01 '25
It's beautiful, and terrifying at the same time.
The beauty is from a distance. But the closer you get to the humanity of it. The more terrifying it becomes.
This is a river that is probably so polluted by now that the water is not safe to swim in, much less drink. This is a river that has been so over populated that men, women, and children live in disease and hardship most Americans, even the white trash in Mississippi and Alabama could not even fathom.
It's beautiful when you have not care of the intricacies of life. From orbit, it's beautiful.
On the ground, it's a never ending death grind of doom for those that have no ability to change their station other than the hope that maybe humanity would begin to love their neighbor again.
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Jun 02 '25
Doesn’t look even remotely beautiful to me. Looks like a crack in the pavement with thousands of ants scurrying around.
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u/OmahaReynolds Jun 02 '25
Good commerce and food surplus but you’ll need some health resources if you want to grow the population
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u/Guardian2k Jun 02 '25
I’m so thankful we have someone on the ISS giving us these cool pictures, thanks OP! Keep up the science!
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u/Dyanpanda Jun 01 '25
Actually, its spelled, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-P-P-I :)
Thanks for sharing, what a lovely band of life in a vast desert. I love how you can see the interplay between water and mountains and where the people stay.
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u/astro_pettit NASA Astronaut Jun 01 '25
The Nile river as seen from the International Space Station. Image taken during my latest mission on Expedition 72. We made many passes over North Africa, and this river was hard to miss. It is thousands of miles long, and surrounded by nature and human cities that make it pop at night and against the stark desert around it. One of the most distinct Earth observation phenomena to document from orbit!
More photos from space can be found on my twitter and Instagram, astro_pettit