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AssetID: 40421991

Headline: Tournament Earth 2020: Best Picture Of NASA Earth Observatory Contest - Paris at Night

Caption: Even in a sea of lights, certain landmarks stand out. Around local midnight, astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Paris, often referred to as the “City of Light.” The second image below is a close-up drawn from the same photo. The pattern of the street grid dominates at night, providing a completely different set of visual features from those visible during the day. For instance, the winding Seine River is a main visual cue by day, but here the thin black line of the river is hard to detect until you focus on the strong meanders and the street lights on both banks. The brightest boulevard in the dense network of streets is the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the historical axis of the city, as designed in the 17th century. Every year on Bastille Day (July 14), the largest military parade in Europe processes down the Champs Élysées, reviewed by the President of the Republic. This grand avenue joins the site of the former royal Palace of the Tuileries—whose gardens appear as a dark rectangle on the river—to the star-like meeting place of eleven major boulevards at the Arc de Triomphe. This famous plaza is also referred to as the Étoile, or “star.”.

Keywords: France,Station,Space,astronauts,midnight,landmarks,Lights,Sea,Night,Paris,odd,oddity,offbeat,weird,amazing,interesting,cool,science,tech,technology

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