NASA Video: A View of Christmas Lights from Space

NASA and NOAA are teaming up to provide a view of the holidays like you've never seen before. Thanks to the Suomi NPP, scientists are able to show how bright North America gets around Christmas time.

After pouring over data from the past three years, scientists say the lights in U.S. cities shine 20 to 50 times brighter during Christmas and New Year's when compared to light output during the rest of the year.

"When we started looking at the data at night over the United States we were expecting to see a lot of stability at night, and we were really surprised to see the vibrant increase in activity during the holidays," said Miguel Roman, a physical scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Roman and his colleagues reviewed the light output in 2012 and 2013 in 70 U.S. cities as a first step in determining patterns in urban energy use, a key factor in greenhouse gas emissions.