In what may be the best single representation of the visual feast of images we have enjoyed from Expedition 28 flight engineer Ron Garan during his 5 1/2 month stay aboard the ISS, this amazing image shows him inside the Station’s cupola as he took his last images of Earth before departing. I must say,…
Category: Earth
As The World Turns
Today is the autumnal equinox, when the Earth receives sunlight at its most direct angle relative to its equator and poles. As Earth orbits around the Sun over the course of a year, its axial tilt causes the angle of solar illumination to change – a predictable and regular change, but a change nonetheless. This…
Juno Looks Back Home
It’s not the famous “pale blue dot” image, but it sure is close: on August 26 the Juno spacecraft turned its JunoCam to take this image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of about 6 million miles. From that distance, our world is effectively reduced to a bright fuzzy dot, with a smaller,…
Space Mountain
Colombia’s Pico de Cristobal Colon rises into the sky in this beautiful photo taken on July 9 by Ron Garan, a NASA astronaut and Expedition 27 flight engineer aboard the International Space Station. Pico de Cristobal Colon (Spanish for “Christopher Columbus’ Peak) is the highest mountain in Colombia and the fifth most prominent in the…
Thank You, Atlantis
“Thank you for your 12 missions helping build the ISS.” – ISS Expedition 27 Engineer Ron Garan NASA astronaut and Expedition 27 Flight Engineer Ron Garan captured this amazingly beautiful image of Atlantis from the window of the Space Station after the shuttle undocked on July 17, 2011. It was the final visit of a shuttle…
Take a Spin Around the Station
Awesome new images of the Space Station and Endeavour taken from orbit!
When We Left Earth
“It’s tiny out there…it’s inconsequential. It’s ironic that we had come to study the Moon and it was really discovering the Earth.” – Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut When We Left Earth is a fantastic six-part series by Discovery Channel that features hours of new footage from NASA and interviews with many of those personally…
An Astronaut’s View of Earth
Can’t see the video below? Click here. This really is a must-see… it’s a video by NASA TV showing our planet as it is experienced by the privileged few who have flown in space and spent time aboard the International Space Station. Looking down on the landscapes of our world from orbit, passing 225 miles…
Grimsvotn GOES Boom
Watch as a huge cloud of ash bursts into the upper atmosphere from Iceland’s Grímsvötn volcano in this sequence of images taken by NASA’s GOES-13 weather observation satellite. The oblique angle of illumination and position along the edge of the globe emphasizes the incredible vertical scale of the eruption. (Click to play.) Grímsvötn erupted on…
First Orbit: Celebrating 50 Years in Space
On April 12, 1961 – a mere five decades ago – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched aboard his Vostok-1 spacecraft, becoming the first human in space. Alone, he was the first person ever to look down upon our planet from orbit. He was only 28 years old. Today the world celebrates the 50th anniversary…
One Earth. One planet. One hour.
Earth Hour. On Saturday, March 26 at 8:30pm – 9:30pm your local time, join millions of people who will show their support for our world’s environmental future by turning off the lights in your home or business for one hour. That’s it. Lights out. It’s a small reduction in power usage, but a big message…
From the LITD Archives: No Such Thing as Global Warming?
Originally posted April 22, 2009 Tell that to the Wilkins Ice Shelf. At least 10,000 years old, the 1/3 mile wide span of ice that linked Antarctica to nearby Charcot Island broke apart on April 5, 2009, as expected by scientists watching worldwide. This collapse opens a path for icebergs from the rest of the…
Lights in the Dark 