Certainly,that photo shows is wonderful and incrediblel.I think how can this be?

The wonders of science continue to amaze me while human beings never disappoint. The larger part of this picture is Africa but all the comments are centered on Europe...Oh well,that's human nature!

Doesn't seem like a real photo to me. You can't see the bottom of the ocean floor like that. Pretty sure they just took a photo from google earth

I thought the sun came up in the east, photo shows eastern Europe dark, while western section is morning (in sunlight). How can this be?

(1) Would there really be so many lights on in the early hours of the morning prior to sunrise?
(2) The sun does set in the west, so the eastern part of Europe is dark when the western part still has light (though not as much as shown in this "visualization").
(3) Aren't the vast majority of people awake at sunset, while many are asleep at sunrise?

Photo is real (no trickery). There are two terminators. One on sunset side (what we see here) other on sun rise side. Think about it! Photo shows it is still day in England, while it is already night in Europe. The Earth rotates from left to right on this photo, the shadow goes from right to left. You would understand it better if it was time lapse.

Yes it's a compilation. However, dawn rises in the east and travels West, so does nightfall. It's dark on the East coast before it gets dark on the West coast. The compilation is correct.

HI Rick --

I initially had the same reaction, however, the caption states the image to be a compilation. What they have done is take a bunch of day photos of western Europe and juxtaposed them with those night photos taken of eastern Europe. In this case, the compilation image gives the illusion that the Sun is rising in the West. To avoid confusing the populace, NASA really should have done it the other way around...

Ok, I guess I learned something...