What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.

— Norman Cousins, Cosmic Search magazine, volume 1, number 1, January 1979.

Omg, it's full of stars.

Very awesome video, and I love the reflection of the moon in the ocean at ~ 2:50. Sort of makes me appreciate just how much atmosphere we really have - the clouds look 2-dimensional compared to the glow on the horizon.

They need to put a little minimap on the bottom right corner so you know where you are. It's a bit hard to catch that fast.

I liked that aspect of it. I was happy to not understand what I was seeing, it's Earth as I've never seen before.

2 versions then?

Watching this and trying to figure out where "I" am in each clip feels like I'm trying to take a Sporcle quiz. That said, when I can figure it out, it's often quite amazing some of the emergent patterns, like "the lights are in a grid---must be the US Midwest", or "the lights just... stop" as at the border between Egypt and Sudan (among others).

Please edit this to link directly to the video http://vimeo.com/32001208 and with the correct title, "Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over"

I'm embarrassed by my ignorance of geography, but quite intrigued, so I'll ask: can anyone identify the crooked little vein of light that's centered at 3:48 and again (though to the left) at 4:38?

I believe the row of lights at 3:48 is the India-Pakistan border (viewed approaching from north to south)

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/09/06/photo-a-space-...

In the above video, at about 1:21 (and at other places, but most prominent at 1:21), there are flashes of light that can be seen from the ISS. Most of then are in coastal areas or in sea (small islands) and appear rather grouped than scattered equally without any definitive pattern. My guess is that they can be light houses.. but what do you think?

Due to the way the flashes scatter among the clouds, I'd say that they are lightning contained within thunderheads/conflicting air masses.

But lightning should be very quick and hence shouldn't appear in a time lapse.. It is still as quick in time lapse as it would be in normal speed. :O

The time lapse catches the strikes by chance. There are ~100 lightning flashes per second globally (80% are in-cloud flashes and 20% are cloud-to-ground flashes) and ~2000 thunderstorms occurring simultaneously on Earth. [1]

That's a huge opportunity to catch lightning flashes over a high quality time lapse from August to October 2011 (the time span of the video).

The astronauts' real-time views from the ISS' windows must be amazing. If I were up there in the ISS, I'd never get any work done because I'd be staring out the window the whole time!

[1] http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00239.htm

Looks like lightning.

Thanks for posting this. I love these time lapse videos of Earth / space.

A few more I like:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110328.html

http://vimeo.com/22439234 (same author)

At 2:50 a patch of light seems to track the space station on the surface of the Earth. Is this light from the sun deflecting off the hull? If so, would this be visible (as a sudden flash of light) from the surface of the Earth?

Reflection of the moon?

Does there seem to be something wrong with the audio on this to anybody else? It sounds like it's peaking out, or maybe flash is choking on it or something?

What is the orange and/or green glowing envelope that seems to be surrounding the earth? Is it light reflected off the atmosphere?

Direct link to video:

http://vimeo.com/32001208

Thanks. I wish "JAW DROPPING" wasn't in the headline. It's a cheap way to bolster views while simultaneously boosting my expectations to unreasonable levels and making me want to be contrarian despite it being a beautiful video.