Andrew Sullivan points to this picture over at Rush Limbaugh's site, ostensibly of the north Atlantic, Europe and Africa, as the terminator crosses them, taken from the Columbia on its last mission.

I thought it looked a little suspicious. The altitude seems much too high, and it would be amazing to see this much of the earth at once with absolutely no cloud cover. Also note that you can see the mid-Atlantic ridge, which shouldn't be viewable through thousands of feet of water.

Keith Cowing over at NASA Watch confirms my suspicions. Both Andrew and Rush were taken in. It's a computer simulation. You can find it at this cool site (they do it for the Moon as well), and the particular view on Rush's site can be generated here, with real-time lighting conditions.

Rush needs to verify his sources a little more carefully.

[Update at 3 PM PST]

Snopes has it wrong, too.

Thanks -- I suspected that photo was too good to be true but I didn't have the balls to say so myself.

Additional giveaway: in January the advancing edge of night runs northwest-southeast, not northeast-southwest as in the image.

You can also see the outlines of the mid-Atlantic ridge and the continental shelves--features that would be invisible because they are under water.