TUTORIAL: Learn how to enable NASA city lights visualization in Google Earth Pro

Here you will learn how to “return” to the night lights view at night in Google Earth Pro.

Why did Google remove night viewing from its program?

A few years ago, in one of its updates, Google removed the image galleries that were already being accessed very little by users of the Google Earth Pro program. One of them was from NASA, with historical images from the agency, and most notably, one that showed the night sky, with the city lights. This was a very interesting feature, as it could show planet Earth at night.

Although this layer is no longer available in the program, NASA itself provides a page just for nighttime viewing, which is NASA Worldview. You can access it at this link.

But if you want to return to this old layer of night views in Google Earth Pro, below, I’ll teach you how to “reactivate” this function.

KML file of night illuminations visualization

NASA itself makes a KML file available for download that displays the city lights and to download it, click this link and download it.

When downloading, double-click the file and instantly, Google Earth Pro will open and automatically apply to the program.

The result is more than cool, and see what the visualization looks like.

NOTE: Once applied, uncheck the last Still Image option (2048×1024), as it reduces the image quality applied to the entire globe.