Bonn, Germany

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 south of Cologne. 

Zoom in to see this image at its full 10 m resolution or click on the circles to learn more about the features in it.

ESA’s Living Planet Symposium – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world – is being held on 23–27 May 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 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 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 centre 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 organisations and several United Nations institutions including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The 1233 km-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 centres in Europe: the World Conference Center Bonn. It is here where ESA’s Living Planet Symposium 2022 will take place.

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

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