If you couldn’t tell, we love time-lapse videos… whether they’re made of photos looking up at the sky from Earth or looking down at Earth from the sky! This latest assembly by photographer Bruce W. Berry takes us on a tour around the planet from orbit, created from images taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station and expertly de-noised, stabilized and smoothed to 24 frames per second. The result is — like several others before — simply stunning, a wonderful reminder of our place in space and the beauty of our living world.
Do you know how much material falls onto Earth from space every day? How many different species there are in the ocean? How far the continents move every year? In honor of Earth Day here’s a very cool infographic that answers those questions about our planet — and 47 more!
Check out the full version below:
And for more interesting information about our planet, click here and here.
Nunataks in the western portion of the Greenland ice sheet seen from the NASA P-3B during an IceBridge survey of southwestern Greenland on Apr. 8, 2013. Nunataks are areas of exposed rock in an ice sheet such as ridges or mountain peaks. These jagged rock formations are sometimes used as landmarks on an ice sheet. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel.
Here’s a view you don’t often see: Greenland’s glaciers from 500 meters above the ice. But this new video from NASA’s Operation IceBridge — recorded on April 9, 2013 — shows areas of southeast Greenland using a cockpit camera, revealing what the pilots see as they fly NASA’s P-3B airborne laboratory low over the Arctic. Following a glacier’s sometimes winding flow line gives IceBridge researchers a perspective on the ice not possible from satellites which pass in straight lines overhead. By gathering such data, IceBridge is helping to build a continuous record of change in the polar regions.
The plane allows researchers to images Earth’s polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand processes that connect the polar regions with the global climate system. IceBridge utilizes a highly specialized fleet of research aircraft and the most sophisticated suite of innovative science instruments ever assembled to characterize annual changes in thickness of sea ice, glaciers, and ice sheets. In addition, IceBridge collects critical data used to predict the response of earth’s polar ice to climate change and resulting sea-level rise. IceBridge also helps bridge the gap in polar observations between NASA’s ICESat satellite missions.
Nighttime photo of the Nile delta region taken from the ISS (NASA)
Enjoy some great views of our home planet from images taken from the orbiting Earth-observing satellites and taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. The satellites and scientists are cranking out data 24/7 to help us all better understand and sustain our home planet.
Above is a video created for Earth Month, and specifically Earth Day (April 22) from ISS imagery, and below is another video from satellite imagery. These are unique looks at the beauty and wonder of our home planet.
A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring.
This video compilation from the Goddard Space Flight Center takes a look back at the best views of our planet from space in the last year, including true color satellite images, Earth science data visualizations, time lapses from the International Space Station, and computer models.
Ice sheet loss increasing at both poles. Image credit: Ian Joughin, University of Washington.
In honor of Earth month, NASA has launched a beautiful new interactive image gallery that explores and highlights our latest understanding of Earth science and our changing planet. Included are spectacular images and visualizations to help understand the latest findings.
Included is information on the decline of sea ice in the Arctic, a visualization of global aerosols, images of the latest storms, and much more.
A map of the world made up of the locations of ISS astronaut photos (Nathan Bergey/open.nasa.gov)
If you could spend a few months — or even a few days — living aboard the ISS, what would you take pictures of? Earth, most likely, with your favorite landforms and your family’s and friends’ hometowns ranking high on the list. After a while, I’m sure plenty of other Earthly features would become photo targets — weather, aurorae, world cities at night, etc. — but ultimately, over the course of your stay in orbit, you would be able to see a trend in the pictures you take, and where you took them.
And over the span of 35 missions across more than 12 years, the graph above shows the trend of all the astronauts’ pictures. Look familiar?
Nighttime photo of the Nile delta region taken from the ISS (NASA)
Created by open-source NASA data aficionado Nate Bergey, the image above is a map made up of over a million points (1,129,177, to be exact) each representing the global coordinates of an JSC-archived photograph taken from the ISS.
Clearly the continents are astronauts’ favored photo subjects, with the populous urban areas of North America, Europe, Egypt and the Middle East, as well as the western and southern coasts of South America standing out.
“This makes sense, photos of clouds over an otherwise blank ocean get old after a while,” Nate Bergey wrote on his blog, open.nasa.gov. “I’m sure every astronaut has taken at least one photograph of the town they grew up in.”
Of course, the map doesn’t create an image of the entire globe. This is because the points denote actual over-ground coordinates of the Station (not necessarily what the photos themselves are of) and “the ISS stays between about 50° and -50° latitude as it orbits the Earth,” as noted by Bergey.
A map of the world with the points overlaid onto it, color-coded by mission, shows the difference:
Bergey also notes the proliferation of purple-colored dots… these indicate the hundreds of images taken by NASA astronaut Don Pettit during Expedition 30/31, when he created incredible time-lapse videos of the Earth from the ISS.
One of many long-exposure images taken by Don Pettit aboard the ISS (NASA/JSC). See more here.
With such a unique and lofty perspective of our world, it’s no wonder that astronauts spend so much time snapping photos — I can’t say I’d be able to tear myself away from the window myself! Read more about Nate Bergey’s project and how he created his map on his open.NASA blog here.
Screenshot of one of the competing images in the Earth Madness competition bracket.
NASA’s Earth Observatory website has decided to join in on the bracketology fever that overtakes many US citizens during the month of March … but with science and not basketball. Instead of March Madness, it’s EARTH MADNESS! From March 4 through April 5, Earth Observatory fans can vote for their favorite images of the year. There are thirty-two images vying for the title, but only one can be the winner. This will be a head-to-head competition, whittling the total from 32 to 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 in a tournament of remote sensing science. The competition will be stiff in the four brackets — Earth at Night, Events, Data, and True-Color — so it is up to you to separate the winners from the losers. Check back each week to vote in the next round and help choose a winner.
Print a copy of the bracket, fill it out, and get that workplace pool going. Come back every Monday to vote and watch the results.
Lava flows on Mt. Etna visible from the The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured Etna on February 19, 2013. Credit: NASA
Italy’s Mount Etna has turned on again, spewing lava and gas in its first big eruption in 2013. The volcano is one of the most active in the world, and is Europe’s tallest active volcano, currently standing about 3,329 m (10,922 ft) high.
The volcano has been “simmering” for 10 months, but on February 19 and 20, the famous volcano came to life, providing dramatic visuals from the ground (see the video below) as well as from space, with three outbursts in less than 36 hours. This image from the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured Etna on February 19 at 9:59 a.m. Central European Time, about 3 hours after the end of the first outbursts.
The false-color image combines shortwave infrared, near infrared, and green light in the red, green, and blue channels of an RGB picture. This combination differentiates the appearance of fresh lava, snow, clouds, and forest.
Fresh lava is bright red—the hot surface emits enough energy to saturate the instrument’s shortwave infrared detectors, but is dark in near infrared and green light. Snow is blue-green, because it absorbs shortwave infrared light, but reflects near infrared and green light. Clouds made of water droplets (not ice crystals) reflect all three wavelengths of light similarly, and are white. Forests and other vegetation reflect near infrared more strongly than shortwave infrared and green light, and appear green. Dark gray areas are lightly vegetated lava flows, 30 to 350 years old.
The video from the ground was captured by Klaus Dorschfeldt, a videographer and webmaster at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.
In an update today on the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Vocanology website, a fourth episode of lava fountains was reported. “Like the previous paroxysms, this event produced fountains and lava and an ash cloud that has shifted to the northern sector of the volcano.”
Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as seen by Voyager 1 on Valentine's Day in 1990
On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of travel through the outer Solar System, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft crossed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around, capturing photos of the planets as seen from that vast distance. It was a family portrait taken from over 4.4 billion kilometers away — the ultimate space Valentine.
Who says astronomy isn’t romantic?
Full mosaic of Voyager 1 images taken on Feb. 14, 1990 (NASA/JPL)
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”
– Carl Sagan
It was the unique perspective above provided by Voyager 1 that inspired Carl Sagan to first coin the phrase “Pale Blue Dot” in reference to our planet. And it’s true… from the edges of the solar system Earth is just a pale blue dot in a black sky, a bright speck just like all the other planets. It’s a sobering and somewhat chilling image of our world… but also inspiring, as the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are now the farthest human-made objects in existence — and getting farther every second. They still faithfully transmit data back to us even now, over 35 years since their launches, from 18.5 and 15.2 billion kilometers away.
The Voyagers sure know the value of a long-term relationship.
It was the unique perspective above provided by Voyager 1 that inspired Carl Sagan to first coin the phrase