The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

Suppose you wanted to get an image of earth taken from outer space. Where would you go? The first place I would look is, of course, Google images. But what if there is a better place to get these images? The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth has a complete collection of photographs of Earth taken by astronauts. For example, the image to the left shows the Chilean cities of Concepción and Hualpén. This image, from astronauts aboard the International Space Station, was taken about seven hours after the 8.8 earthquake occurred. You can see the airport in the top center, smoke plumes, and collapsed bridges. From the website:

Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Our database tracks the locations, supporting data, and digital images for these photographs. We process images coming down from the International Space Station on a daily basis and add them to the 944,465 views of the Earth already made accessible on our website.

via The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

This story written by Paul Adams

Paul Adams leads an award-winning, diverse contractor team that runs a federal high performance computing facility where he has worked for 17 years. He loves getting his hands on the latest visualization and computer hardware, astronomy, aerospace engineering, working with the poor, and ringing cowbells.