Exploring Earth From Space: Bonn – One of the Oldest Cities in Germany

This satellite image, which features the German city of Bonn, was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. With its high-resolution optical camera, it can image up to 10 m ground resolution. Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA’s Living Planet Symposium – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world – is being held on May 23–27, 2022, in Bonn, Germany. Held every three years, the symposium brings together scientists and researchers, as well as industry and users of Earth observation data, from all over the world to present and discuss the latest findings on Earth science.

Bonn, one of the oldest cities in Germany, can be seen straddling the Rhine River in the lower half of the image, around 24 km (15 miles) south of Cologne. Bonn is in the south of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany’s largest metropolitan area with over 11 million inhabitants.

The city has a total area of 141 sq km (54 sq miles) and 330,000 inhabitants. As the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, Bonn is devoted to the promotion of musical arts with the Beethovenhalle concert hall, a center of the city’s musical life. Socially, Bonn is a very active city with many art galleries, gardens, and a buzzing nightlife to offer.

Bonn is one of Germany’s top-ranked conference cities and is home to numerous international organizations and several United Nations institutions including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The 1233 km (766 mile) long Rhine River flows from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the image, it flows from bottom-right to top-left. Along the river lies one of the most modern congress centers in Europe: the World Conference Center Bonn. It is here where ESA’s Living Planet Symposium 2022 will take place.

Organized with the support of the German Aerospace Center, the week-long event focuses on how Earth observation contributes to both science and society. With over 240 scientific sessions on Earth observation science and satellite missions, there will also be a wide range of sessions focusing on advances in artificial intelligence, digital twins of Earth, commercial opportunities thanks to the space industry, the upcoming ESA Ministerial Council in 2022, and much more.

Watch the Living Planet Symposium opening session live on Monday, May 23, starting at 09:00 CEST. Selected sessions will be streamed live from Bonn on ESA WebTV. The full program is available at the Living Planet Symposium website.

This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video program embedded above, was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. With its high-resolution optical camera, it can image up to 10 m ground resolution.