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.

View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

More Information

Knate Myers on Facebook… 

Knate’s website… 

Knate at 500px.Com… 

Music by John Murphy - Sunshine (Adagio In D Minor)

Performed by the City Of Prague Philharmonic, available at Amazon…

Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,

NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth…

Time Lapse View of Earth From Space

This video has been getting a lot of attention since it was released by NASA during November. The five minute time lapse film consists of "...sequences of photographs taken with a low-light camera by the crew of expeditions 28 and 29 onboard the International Space Station." The images where shot from August to October, 2011, at an altitude of around 350 km.

Watching the film, I was amazed at the number of storms that seem to be taking place at any one time, somewhere on the planet – as indicated by the numerous lightning flashes that you see throughout the flyovers.

Among the highlights of the film are images of the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis;  a view of the Northwest coast of United States and Central South America; Central Africa and the Middle East; Islands in the Philippine Sea; the Mideast at Night; the Mediterranean Sea, and Eastern Europe.

This film really makes me appreciate the fragile planet we all share and inhabit. From a height of 350 kilometres the world truly is a beautiful place, a fact we can easily – and all too often do – lose sight of as we crawl around down here at surface level. Let me tell you, dear reader, if you think we humans are going to find a better place elsewhere in the universe – you are kidding yourself. This is it. This really is as good as it gets, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can focus on protecting the planet, and doing everything possible to ensure it, and we, survive for many future generations.

Make sure you set the video to full screen mode, then sit back and enjoy…

EARTH from Michael König on Vimeo.