Image Credit: NASA
With hardware from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station appearing in the near foreground, a night time European panorama reveals city lights from Belgium and the Netherlands at bottom center.
The British Isles partially obscured by solar array panels at left, the North Sea at left center, and Scandinavia at right center beneath the end effector of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System or Canadarm2. This image was taken by the station crew on Jan. 22, 2012.
Blue Marble 2012
See, when you look at this on your Dashboard, it isn’t going to do it justice. Instead, click here, because viewing HD pictures of Earth at 8000 x 8000 px is really where it’s at.
cwnl:
Coronal Gash: Aurora Alert
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring a dark gash in the sun’s atmosphere—a coronal hole. It’s the dark vertical feature in this extreme UV image taken on Jan. 13th.
Coronal holes are places where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. This yawning hole is about 120,000 km wide and more than a million km long. Solar wind flowing from its UV-dark abyss will reach Earth on Jan. 16th or 17th, possibly sparking auroras for high-latitude sky watchers.
(Source : ikenbot)
The Sagan Series: Chapter 2 - Life Looks For Life.
I know I’ve already posted one of these, but they are all too good not to share again.
If you haven’t seen The Sagan Series I highly recommend it.
The southern lights from space as photographed from the ISS by astronaut Ron Garan (@Astro_Ron), who is on his way back to Earth.
(via Boing Boing)
“I got frustrated with NASA and made this video. NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.”
Such a great video. Carl Sagan being profound as usual.
