BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut

Subject: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 06:58 PM

What beauty there lies in the view of our planet from space: Blue Beauty

link fixed

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: bobad
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:06 PM

Uh...your link leads to a Google Docs page.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:08 PM

Yes, and then the pix load as a slide show.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: bobad
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:20 PM

Well, all I get is either a video explaining how Google Docs works or a 6 page go through of that. Maybe one need an account to see the content which you see.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Art Thieme
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:46 PM

Kat, it dopesn't work for me either.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:50 PM

Sorry about that folks. Please try http://www.ecocover-america.com/media/planet-earth-nasa-slideshow.html.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Janie
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 09:03 PM

Thanks Kat. Awesome.

They also really bring home the reality of light pollution. I also think about all the fossil fuels burned to generate the electricity for those lights.

It was also graphic and fascinating to see where the places were where there were few lights at night. Almost the entire interior of Australia, which I guess is mostly desert, Eurasia, and big chinks of Africa really stood out by the absence of artificial lights.

Did I see Skarpi waving at me from Iceland:^)

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: bobad
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 09:03 PM

Beautiful!

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 10:09 PM

Janie - the pic shows the coastal settlement pattern of Australia - more people live in the coastal regions. Lack of water & hot dry areas limit settlement. We have lotsa' empty space & nomadic Indigenous people managed to live in these areas, but modern folks need more water.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 10:10 PM

oops - t continue

many thanks to Kat for posting the link

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 11:01 PM

Whew! Glad we figured out the link. Thanks, folks. These were too awesome not to share!

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 09:52 AM

Sign me up for a trip in space!

Charley Noble, adrift in Michigan

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 10:46 AM

It makes me wonder about Mars when it too was a beautiful blue.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 03:58 PM

The first link worked for me.

Could you tell that my porch lights were off?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Skivee
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 05:45 PM

I call "shennangans".
FWIW A few of you will know that I am greatly interested in astronomy and photography, so the subject of light pollution is near and dear to my heart.
The mindless use of lights to stave off the terrors beyond the fire circle is changing our lives in subtle and dangerous ways. Plants and animals life cycles are being affected. Children are not seeing stars at night. Energy is being wasted.
That being said, the photos perporting to show daylight and terrestrial lights at night are highly manipulated computer simulations based on USAF satellite images. They are quite unlike any view an astronaut would see while looking at Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 06:35 PM

Clarify, please, Skivee? It clearly states before the last few that they are satellite images. Do you mean the two which show earth as the beautiful blue ball with lights delineating the continents, just before the explanatory text before the satellite shots? And, just what would an astronaut see? Not tryign to be picky; I'd really like to know what you mean.

(SRS, thanks, I fixed the first link.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 07:32 PM

Beeeoootiful Kat. Thank you - I've sent the link to my kids.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Skivee
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 08:25 PM

Kat, the shots that show night views in this series is a combination of technical data from USAF satellites that were designed for detection of missle launches and other nefarious activities and computer generated maps of the globe. They are NOT photographs. (You may note that there are no clouds anywhere on the planet.)
In the real world you would not be able to view the sunlit and nighttime areas at the same time...too much difference in brightness for even the wonderous human eye to record in the same instant.
Also, the night images are amplified compared to what you would see with unaided eyes. That's not to say that you could not see lights of cities, towns and villages. Just not this bright.
On the other hand, isn't it a lovely planet?

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Skivee
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 08:52 PM

I hope I'm not beating a dead horse.
Below you'll find a link that shows a similar contrast range. The highlight areas are blown out, lacking detail. A shorter exposure would have shown the thin cresent moon, but without any detail in the area lit by the relatively weak light reflected from Earth.

The old moon in the arms of the new

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Janie
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 09:04 PM

I don't think so, Skivee and Kat.

They may not be photographs, and it is good to know that. However, they are still beautiful data representations of our lovely planet.

Kinda like the images from Hubble. Not really photographs, but oh, the glorious information they still give us in images the human eye can interpret and therefore, conceive.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 11:30 PM

Thanks for that, Skivee. I agree with Janie, they are beautiful, regardless. It would probably be better if they had not labelled them as "photographs" though. They came that way via email, so lots of folks will not know the truth of it. As you say though, it sure is pretty!

I also received THIS COMPARISON SET via email and thought it was pretty neat!

Thanks, everyone,

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 05:56 AM

Hold on ...

That these photos areen't real I can understand, but Hubble?

Are you sure?

Hubble isn't a radio telescope but an optical one I thought.

I believed that different images, such as infra red etc were obtained by using appropriately sensetive film/light sensors.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Janie
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 06:35 AM

Skivee can probably answer that better than me, lox. I think Hubble images are light based images, but Hubble detects a lot of light that falls in the spectrum that human vision does not detect. The "photographs" we see are somehow colored or manipulated so that color is added to represent the light that our eyes do not see.

At least, I think it's something like that. If you look at the captions under Hubble images, there is usually something written there to indicate something of the sort has been done.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: topical tom
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 11:00 AM

An awesome and beautiful diary for the ages! Thanks so much for this link, Kat!

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: Skivee
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 02:27 PM

Janie, your Hubble description is as good as any I could come up with. Let's go with that one.
There are no Hubble images in the series.
Only 6 images are photos by astronauts, the rest are computerized representations.
I don't want to get too hair-splitty, but Hubble's images are recorded across a broad part of the light spectrum; from UV to Infra-Red. Frequencies of light can be chosen and combined to form images which reveal the chemistry and physics of astronomical objects.
Certainly the increased use of image processing is improving our understanding of astronomy.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Beauty - photos by an astronaut
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 30 Apr 09 - 01:43 PM

How about images like some of those we see of Nebulae and supernovae?

Are they as they would be seen by a human astronaut aboard a passing spaceship or are they only visible to UV or IR sensitive technology?