Aurora seen from space, taken aboard the ISS
There's an incredible compendium of astronauts' photographs of Earth, taken over decades of space exporation, available at The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. From Mercury days through the International Space Station era, NASA has compiled a huge collection of photos looking homeward.
The site notes: "Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Our database tracks the locations, supporting data, and digital images for these photographs.
We process images coming down from the International Space Station on a daily basis and add them to the 770,668 views of the Earth already made accessible on our website. These images include 324,812 from the International Space Station."
The statistics are noted through September 1, 2008. The site is neatly and effficiently laid out. You can look at large-group collections, itemized specific topics, or perform your own search.
And there's a bonus--links to articles that go along with the photos. For example, space photographs of auroras, also called Northern Lights like the one pictured above, are discussed by astronaut Dr. Don Pettit, Ph.D.
What he writes is, like his subject, haunting and beautiful:
"f Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, had a sister she would be the goddess of Aurora. Glowing green ripples form arcs that constantly transform their shape into new glowing diaphanous forms: there is nothing static about aurora.
It is always moving, always changing, and like snowflakes, each display is different from the last. Sometimes, there is a faint touch of red layered above the green. There are bright spots within the arcs that come and go, and transform into upward directed rays topped by feathery red structures. Sometimes there will be six or more rays, sometimes none at all."
Pettit then goes on to give the scientific explanation of what causes auroras, and more insight into several other photos of those dancing Northern Lights. The scientist lived onboard the ISS for five and one-half months, from November of 2003 to May of 2003. Pettit also performed 13 hours of space walking tasks.
The photography project is also participating in the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY), an international effort to collect relevant scientific data of the Earth's polar regions. These data are crucial to understand how processes at the high latitudes influence global climate and climate changes.
The photography gateway, the website notes, is a service of the International Space Station program. The collection makes it clear that there are many bonuses to manned spaceflight, including a better understanding of our own home planet.
And, there's relaxing and just enjoying the beauty presented at the Gateway. The photographs are managed and provided by the Image Science and Analysis Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center.
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