This video is unspeakably beautiful. Time lapse images of the fragile shell of our atmosphere, the aurora, and a phenomena called “air glow” are presented in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s breath-taking.
To quote Alex Rivest, the creator of this video:
“A good photograph is one that sparks a question. In looking at the pictures taken from the International Space Station of the earth at night, I find my attention drawn to that thin line separating earth from space: Our atmosphere.”
Alex has also created a blog spot, Earth, Night Glow, Aurora and Atmosphere, that contains a respectable amount of information regarding the images in the video.
After viewing this video, I was left not only with a sense of profound awe but also a conflicting feeling of how fragile our existence is and how amazing it is that this thin shell has maintained life on this planet for all these eons.
Enjoy a trip around our world with new eyes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I encourage you to leave your impressions under “Comments”. I’d love to hear if and how this video affected you.
An unusually large Near-Earth Object, 2012 LZ1 has just been discovered by Rob McNaught and colleagues on 2012 June 10/11. The asteroid is roughly the size of a city block (1,650 feet wide) and will pass within 14 lunar distances of the Earth on Thursday, June 14, 2012.
The possibility of a collision is nil, but it should pass close enough to be filmed on camera. If you want to watch this event unfold, the Slooh Space Camera will track live along with its discoverers.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The video of this is below.
The Observable Universe
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
― Carl Sagan
Our little blue dot, the Earth.
To put things into a more tangible perspective, here is some information regarding our Solar System and the Universe.
The distance from the Earth to the Sun is approximately 93,000,000 miles. The Milky Way Galaxy, or which our Solar System is only a very small part, would take 100,000 years to travel across it if we could travel at the speed of light. Considering our galaxy is one of billions floating in the sea of the Universe, the immensity is beyond the scope of the mind to grasp.
If you want to read more, NASA provides more information here.
New images coming in from the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) of the sun this week have boggled a few imaginations. This new image shows what appears to be a planet-sized mysterious orb hovering above the surface of the sun, joined by an umbilical of sorts. After a few moments it appears to jettison suddenly off into space.
That is, at least, what UFOers and purveyors of Youtube are claiming. Not to discount those who have this passion, this time there is a scientific explanation for this newly observed phenomenon. According to NASA scientists, this strange planetoid and tether are actually related to a little-understood but frequently observed type of solar activity called a “prominence.” The way it is situated beneath another solar feature gives it the other-worldly appearance.
These prominences form loops that can reach thousands of miles out into space. When one extends the way this one did, it usually means it’s about to erupt. This is exactly what happened when the “planetoid” appears to launch into space.
What caused the strange planetoid appearance? The filament seen extending from the surface of the sun is actually a plasma tunnel called a filament tunnel. Because of the angle of its “spout” it appears as a spherical object. Basically, you’re looking straight down into it. These features aren’t uncommon.
So, if you’re like me when I first saw the video, you can put your lower jaw back into its original position and relax into a more comfortable sensation of awe and curiosity. I can hardly wait to see what new things are revealed by the SDO next.
A coronal mass ejection captured by the SOHO observatory on March 12. CREDIT: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
MoonLightened Way 