The Compleat Traveller: Monday Movie: International Space Station at Night

In today’s Monday Movie, we spend four minutes flying around the earth at a speed of 27,685 km/hr (17,500 mi/hr), enjoying views captured by a succession of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit, and despite speeding its way through space at an altitude ranging between 330 km (205 mi) and 435 km (270 mi), its pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays and other components can often be seen with the naked eye from the earth.

Knate Myers has put together this video, View From the ISS at Night, from footage made freely available on various government space related sites, and it offers a unique view of the planet, that few humans have had the joy of experiencing for themselves.

Knate lives in Albuquerque, NM, and writes on his Vimeo profile, that he has a passion for photography. Knate adds:

I love living in the southwest. It's a thrill to capture the sky, the storms and the stars out here. I especially love staying up all night, photographing the night sky far away from the city lights. I try to photograph in such a way that the results have just a slight twist from the ordinary. I want my photos to look the way I see them in my head.

While Knate uses video from other sources in this film, his Vimeo page contains numerous short time-lapse films that he has captured himself, all of which are worth checking out.