I just found this yesterday and immediately fell in love. A little program called Desktop Earth that makes desktop backgrounds using satellite images of the earth. The kicker is that it can update them too, from every minute to hourly.

I love seeing the lights from space and seeing where people tend to live. It can also have clouds, which makes weather patterns much more apparent. Obviously, the bright lights indicate issues with overpopulation and excessive research usage in places, but it is still a pretty sight. It reminds me of being on an airplane at night except on a much grander scale.

If you’re not using Windows, you can get a still image to use as a desktop background from the same link. Attached is an example of the Americas at midnight last night.