Stunning Time Lapse of the Earth From the ISS

The Bad Astronomer writes "Science educator James Drake took 600 still photos from the International Space Station as it orbited the Earth, and created a fantastic time-lapse animation out of them. It must be seen to be appreciated; storms and cities fly past below in amazing clarity."

the video was spectacular

[planimal]

seeing bolts of lightning from space was awfully sublime

Re:the video was spectacular

[ajo_arctus]

I was amazed at just how much lightning was in that video. It never occurred to me until now that there would be so many thunderstorms going on all over the world all of the time. This is a rare video where the superlatives in the headline (amazing, fantastic etc.) are well and truly justified.

Fitting

[DigitalGodBoy]

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M [youtube.com]

Always a good perspective check

It deserves the hyperbole

[jthill]

For the first time, I wondered why we can't mod stories up.

Re:Light pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never been camping, have you?

Re:Green city?

[reverseengineer]

Looks Veracruz has predominantly mercury vapor lighting, as opposed to the yellow-orange sodium vapor lighting seen in most of the other cities. Tokyo at night from space glows greenish blue for this reason, anyway. There's an discussion of this (and of other effects seen in pictures of cities at night taken from orbit) here: Cities At Night [nasa.gov]