As a follow-up to the previous Wonders of the Universe i-app released by Harper Collins, Fragile Earth brings us back from the farthest reaches of the Universe to our own beautiful blue world, whose surface is rapidly changing due to the effects of human civilization. With Fragile Earth those changes are brought to light with…
Tag: Earth
How Big is a CME?
This big! The M1.7-class flare that erupted from active region 1461 on Monday, April 16 let loose an enormous coronal mass ejection many, many times the size of Earth — and I for one was glad that our planet was safely tucked out of aim at the time… and 93 million miles away! Read more here.
A Daily Dose of Dawn
Here’s a gorgeous view from the International Space Station, taken by the Expedition 30 crew on Feb. 4, 2012 as the station passed into orbital dawn. The greens and reds of the aurora borealis shimmer above Earth’s limb beyond the Station’s solar panels as city lights shine beneath a layer of clouds. Read the rest…
“Zero G and I feel fine… Man, the view is tremendous!”
Those were the words enthusiastically said by astronaut John Glenn as he became the first American to orbit the Earth on Feb. 20, 1962. The photo above was taken by Glenn through the window of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, in which he completed three orbits before splashing down in the Atlantic. Much has changed in…
More ISS Awesomeness!
This just in: new time-lapses from the ISS, by way of the Image Science & Analysis Lab at Johnson Space Center and The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Enjoy! (Descriptions from JSC.)
Giant Asteroid to Approach Earth Jan. 31
It’s huge – 21 miles across! It’s bright – magnitude 8.7, maybe more! And right now it’s coming close to Earth – the closest it’s come in 37 years! Why haven’t they told us about this?!? Well, actually they have. It’s asteroid 433 Eros, and on Tuesday it will come within 16.6 million miles of…
Hello, Earth!
It’s the 2012 version of the “Blue Marble“! Here’s an amazing new high-definition portrait of our planet, made by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite launched back on October 28. This is a composite image created from multiple scans taken with the satellite’s Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). Suomi NPP is the first satellite designed to collect…
An Orbital View Over Africa (VIDEO)
Can’t see the video below? Click here. One of the latest uploads to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth site, this short-but-oh-so-sweet video shows the view from the Space Station as it passes over Africa, Madagascar and the southern Indian Ocean at night on December 29, 2011. Multiple lightning storms flash over Africa while…
A View From The Top
From the top of the atmosphere, that is! This gorgeous photo, taken from the Space Station on November 24, 2011, looks over our planet’s limb just after orbital sunset. We get a good look at cloud structures, the thin shell of our atmosphere (it’s always surprising how thin it really is), airglow, stars, and what…
2005 YU55 is coming…
On Tuesday, November 8, at 6:28 p.m. EST, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will soar past our planet, coming even closer than the Moon. This is the nearest an object this large has come since 1976… how will it affect our world? Find out here.
The World Keeps Spinnin’ Round
Just… just watch it: Wow. Now that’s an interesting view! Looking north as the ISS passed southeast over North America on the night of October 18, we get a really great perspective on our planet as a globe spinning in space! Which, of course, it is. Not to mention an awesome view of the aurora…
Goodnight Moon
Another stunning view from the Space Station, this photo was taken by Expedition 28 astronaut Ron Garan on July 31, 2011 and shows the Moon seeming to sink into the ocean of air that is our life-supporting atmosphere. As the Moon passes behind Earth’s limb it appears to get squished because of light being refracted…
Lights in the Dark 