Orbit The Earth In 3-D From Aboard The I.S.S. (Breathtaking Video)

James Drake (a science educator) took 600 publicly available pictures taken as the ISS was orbiting Earth and "stitched" them together to make this video. Although it is only a minute long it is jaw dropping! My favorite part is what appears to be lightning but maybe it could be the Northern Lights.

What do you people think? Aliens need not comment because i'm sure you guys get to see this all the time

The movie starts in the Pacific Ocean and flies over North and South America before sunrise over Antarctica. The neuronal network of nighttime cities is marvelous to behold — not to mention the lightning storms off the southern coast of Mexico and into the Pacific.

It takes roughly a minute to fly from Vancouver Island to the southern portion of Chile.

www.popsci.com...

The actual motion of the International Space Station would appear much slower than this, but still. The clarity, color, dynamism, and sheer jaw-dropping wonder of this is spectacular to behold.

A lot of people on Twitter were asking about the brown-green arc above the Earth. That’s an aerosol haze, a glow caused by particles suspended high above the planet’s surface. It’s an extremely thin layer, so it’s best seen edge-on, for the same reason some very thin shells in space are bright only around the edges. From the ground it’s too faint to see this clearly, and from space it’s only visible on the night side of Earth.

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


Jaw dropping indeed and thanks for posting.

Even more jaw dropping is the thin line on the horizon de-marking all that is between us and space!!

That vid was the most breathtaking thing I have EVER seen! I saw it on liveleak but I could not find the HD version so thank you for that!


Peace

S&F

Now there is one view I would never tire of seeing out a window. I envy the guys on the ISS for that alone. Great post!

Pretty amazing. Thanks for bringing this to our attention

It is lightning, and it is astounding, going round the Earth so many times a day, seeing the street lights on the dark side, then daylight on the other, marvelous!

Notice how on the dark side of the Earth you can see all the lights from the cities? If there were life on another planet wouldn't we be able to see the lights? If we can see the planet then we can see the lights right

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


We can't see the planet directly, we know it's there because of the wobble it creates in its stars light as it passes in front of it.

The few planets they have managed to take a picture of directly are still very, very small and are blurry points of light.

Thanks for sharing! Here's a version with a classical piece of music, making it a bit more soothing.



The visible thin yellow line is the earths ionosphere, quite amazing.

"The neuronal network of nighttime cities" = Light Pollution.

Light pollution which causes us to not be able to see the skies anymore but enables us to function/work around the clock. Wild that it even reflects off of the ISS.

Fascinating video... thanks for bringing it to our attention.

reply to post by dreams n chains


On Earth we call it light pollution but from space it looks beautiful. I stand by my earlier statement, if a planet held intelligent life (such as ours) we would be able to tell by the lights.

Sure, is we could see a planet that ahd lights, it might mean there is life on it. The problem is we cant even get pictures of planets larger than a quarter. We have a long way to go in that dept.

I wonder what earth looks like from pluto, can you even see the lights?

-C

i suggest you go to youtube and watch this at 1080p on full screen, quite simply stunning footage

Originally posted by chris17453
Sure, is we could see a planet that ahd lights, it might mean there is life on it. The problem is we cant even get pictures of planets larger than a quarter. We have a long way to go in that dept.

I wonder what earth looks like from pluto, can you even see the lights?

-C

This is very confusing to me. Are you saying that all the pictures of planets that i have been seeing all of my life are fake? Jupiter, Saturn, Mars....... all fake pictures

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


But those planets don't hold intelligent life, so there isn't going to be lights, in fact, Mars is the only one that could even come close, the rest of the visible planets are either gas giants with no surface that we know of, or too close to the Sun.

You give the impression that you were referring to extra-solar planets in other solar systems, which the majority of we cannot photograph directly and rely on wobble to detect them, as I stated in my previous post.

The closet we come to lights on our own solar systems planets is the auroras similar to what we experience here on Earth.

reply to post by woogleuk


I think they meant any planet, not just the ones in our solar system

reply to post by Celestica


I know, that's what I thought they meant until the post just before my last one.

Not being very clear.