When I flew to Norfolk, Virginia for the LADEE launch last month, I took a redeye flight with an early morning layover at Charlotte, NC's Douglas Airport, because it was US Airways and basically all of their flights connect through Charlotte. Taking the jump of 3 time zones into account, this meant that I was navigating an unfamiliar airport at about 3am my time, after a few fitful hours of trying to sleep on the plane.
The sun was just starting to come up as I waited for my connecting flight from CLT to ORF, and since the airport's due west of downtown Charlotte, there was a nice view of the downtown skyline with a multicolored pre-dawn sky behind it. I will freely admit that these are almost certainly not the best sunrise-in-Charlotte photos ever taken. I'm just pleased (and kind of surprised) that groggy 3am me thought to take photos at all. So here they are.
Updated: I just realized I accidentally took a short video clip, too, so I've added it to the post. It's not any worse than the photos, I'll say that for it.
The other thing I should point out is that most of the tall buildings in downtown Charlotte are headquarters of horrible megabanks, companies that bear a big chunk of the responsibility for detonating the global economy in 2008. Nobody's been held accountable; in fact they've gotten even bigger after getting bailed out at taxpayer expense. Grr.