An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured this oblique view of Earth’s limb, showing the Florida Peninsula and Cuba at night. The photograph reveals the bright center of the Moon’s reflection point, known as moonglint, which is a nighttime equivalent of the sunglint phenomenon often seen in astronaut photographs.
Similar to sunglint, moonglint occurs when the light source (in this case, the Moon) reflects off the water surface at the same viewing angle as the observer—here, a crew member on the space station. This image was taken at 2:23 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on March 19, 2025, during mostly cloud-free conditions. While not visible in the photograph, the Moon had risen approximately three hours earlier, about halfway to reaching its highest point that night. At the time the image was taken, the Moon was in a waning phase, providing about 78 percent of the illumination of a full Moon.
The short focal-length lens used for this photograph provides a field of view roughly similar to that of the human eye. This expansive perspective reveals city size and structure and gives a sense of the curvature of the planet, mirrored by the faint airglow layer above the horizon (Earth’s limb). Dense groupings of light in the peninsula represent some of Florida’s largest cities. The conurbation from Miami to Fort Lauderdale forms the brightest stretch of lights along the southeastern Atlantic seaboard. On Florida’s western coast, Tampa and Saint Petersburg are prominent, while lower-density ligh …