What the Whole Earth Looks Like With Sunset Shadows

Though it’s easy to see shadows on a human scale, like your own when you walk down the street or the shadow of a building, it’s harder to notice the shadows cast by major geographic points, unless you happen to be standing right by a cliff. We just think, “Oh, the sun went behind the mountain.” But a selection of maps by Robbi Bishop-Taylor, a Ph.D student in geography based in Sydney, shows what those shadows might look like from space, as Gizmodo reports.

The maps show how shadows cast by hills and mountains across the world look just before sunset on the summer solstice. They were created using data sets on elevation models from Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation program, and other institutions.

See how immense the shadow from Mt. Etna is:

It’s an unusual take on the typical topographic map, since you see not only how tall certain geographical features are, but the impact they have on the sunshine of what’s around them. Plus, now you can see what it would be like if sunset happened at the same time all across the world.

High resolution prints are for sale on Etsy and start at around $8.

[h/t Gizmodo]

All images courtesy Robbi Bishop-Taylor via Imgur.