Watching the earth go round can be a little like watching sleeping kittens

By Jack Brummet, Ground Control 

There is something calming about watching the earth from near-space. No matter what chaos, madness, sadness, and joy happens on the surface, the world just placidly turns like it has for a long, long time.  Check out some beautiful earth (they are not always live, but you can watch streams of some pretty amazing views.  Go here.  

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Live footage of earth, streaming from the International Space Station

By Jack Brummet, Out There Ed.

A High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment aboard the International Space Station was launched on April 30, 2014.  

"The wide-angle lens shows a huge swath of country that stretches from Portland, Oregon (right) to Phoenix, Arizona (left). The largest string of lights is the Ogden-Salt Lake City-Provo area (lower center) in Utah. The Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan regions, and the cities of the central valley of California (Bakersfield to Redding) stretch across the horizon. The green airglow layer always appears in night images."

"This experiment includes several commercial HD video cameras aimed at the earth which are enclosed in a pressurized and temperature controlled housing. Video from these cameras is transmitted back to earth and also streamed live on this channel. While the experiment is operational, views will typically sequence though the different cameras. Between camera switches, a gray and then black color slate will briefly appear. Since the ISS is in darkness during part of each orbit, the images will be dark at those times. During periods of loss of signal with the ground or when HDEV is not operating, a gray color slate or previously recorded video may be seen. "

To learn more about the HDEV experiment, visit here.   For a display of the real time ISS location plus the HDEV imagery, visit here.

 

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

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The earth-cam, now live from the International Space Station

By Jack Brummet

An earth-cam (actually four cameras) has been created on the International Space Station and is streaming video back to earth 24 hours a day.  This is amazing.

Notes:  "Black Image = International Space Station (ISS) is on the night side of the Earth. Gray Image = Switching between cameras, or communications with the ISS is not available. No Audio = Normal. There is no audio on purpose. Add your own soundtrack."


Live streaming video by Ustream

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The International Space Station Passes By The Moon

By Jack Brummet, Stellar Ed.

A Romanian astrophotographer, Maximilian Teodorescu. recent used a Maksutov telescope to photograph the International Space Station passing in front of the moon in daylight. Wow.  He shot the photograph with a Canon 550D--an ISO 800 image with a shutter speed of 1/1250s.

The International Space Station flies about 220 miles over the earth, or, a three hour drive in your Honda, if it could drive straight up.

The international space station zoomed up a bit (image courtesy of NASA/JPL):

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A flyover of earth, from the International Space Station

We have really been enjoying the photography coming out of the International Space Station as it orbits earth.  This time lapse video starts over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. 

You can see--in order--Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, various cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon.    You see earth's ionosphere (the thin yellow line), the starts of the Milky Way, and at :55 seconds, a satellite.

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One of the sixteen sunrises you see each day at the International Space Station

International Space Station astronaut Ron Garan used a high def camera to film one of the sixteen sunrises astronauts see each day at the international space station in August this year.

This image shows the rising sun as the station flies along a path between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.  Image, courtesy of NASA.

click to enlarge

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