NASA's Real-Life 'Gravity' Images Will Blow You Away (PICTURES).

A new series of breathtaking ISS pictures from the outside.

This one of Bruce McCandless...quite a distance from the ISS, look, no strings. More pictures from the Huffington post at the link.







www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...

reply to post by smurfy


Yes, they are amazing pics. Now I know what we look like to ET from way up there...


Des

Wow, just feel as though i've been to space... Isn't Earths Atmosphere pretty damn thin....Scary Man.

S&F

smurfy
A new series of breathtaking ISS pictures from the outside.

This one of Bruce McCandless...quite a distance from the ISS, look, no strings. More pictures from the Huffington post at the link.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...

Man those pictures in your OP and in the link are amazing... But as a person who uneasy with heights. I just get that sick to my stomach feeling when looking at that astronaut in the middle of space by himself.. I would panic, lol

But where is the stars?

The picture itself is amazing sharp and breathtaking but i lack the knowledge to why we don't see stars?!

I love that picture of the Nile at night. It really gives one a sense of our dependence on water for survival. It's claimed by many Egyptologists that it once ran about 8 miles to the west, directly beside the Giza plateau. You can trace it's old path by the 22 pyramids that run in the same shape as the river itself, always roughly 8 miles west.

coldhnd
But where is the stars?

The picture itself is amazing sharp and breathtaking but i lack the knowledge to why we don't see stars?!

Several of the pictures in the link have stars. I don't know why some don't, but it's easy to see the difference in the exposures. The pictures with stars also tend to show the night lights of earth. I imagine these are just different camera/lens combinations that filter different light.

What's that in the upper center.????

reply to post by HomerinNC


I was kind of wondering what that was too but then after looking at it for a while, decided to settle on the side of reflected light. That caught my eye at first too though and I was surprised to see that that wasn't part of the picture description because I thought that that was what they were looking at.

reply to post by smurfy


Nice post ........but

Notice the one with the moon?
What's up with it? There seems to be a dark seemingly editied side?

Then we also have the insignia on the uniform when did they change it?

Theres also one with a blur as if an edited image lol

then the obvious one..........no stars yet again yet the the astronaught is quite visible?

coldhnd
But where is the stars?

The picture itself is amazing sharp and breathtaking but i lack the knowledge to why we don't see stars?!

Theres loads of stars mate





Absolutely brilliant pictures OP. Can sit staring at each picture for ages. Really good quality, imagine if they caught any pictures of UFO's with that camera, imagine the detail

coldhnd
But where is the stars?
The picture itself is amazing sharp and breathtaking but i lack the knowledge to why we don't see stars?!

DeadGhost
Several of the pictures in the link have stars. I don't know why some don't, but it's easy to see the difference in the exposures. The pictures with stars

I think you are right.

The the day-time side of earth would be very bright, and camera settings would probably be set for fast exposure time and a small aperture, allowing in less light (it was probably close to daylight camera settings, as if you were taking a picture on Earth in daylight). If the camera settings allowed in too much light, the picture may be overexposed.

Stars would not normally show up in a picture with those settings, even if the person who took the picture could see stars. For example, if you took a camera which was set for daylight conditions, and took a picture of a dark and starry sky, no stars would be visible in the finished picture (except maybe something very bright, such as Venus, Jupiter, or Sirius).

For the pictures of the nighttime side of the Earth, the exposure time and aperture setting on the camera were probably set to allow in more light, thus making the stars visible in the finished picture.

jazz10
reply to post by smurfy

 

Nice post ........but

Notice the one with the moon?
What's up with it? There seems to be a dark seemingly editied side?

I'm not sure why you think it was edited, but maybe you say this because the right-side line of the shuttle tail does not look "smooth"? If so, I think that is due to the heat shield tiles that are on the tail of the shuttle. The tile edges are giving the entire tail a bit of a "sawtooth" look.

jazz10
Then we also have the insignia on the uniform when did they change it?

If you mean the shoulder patch seen on the right shoulder of the astronauts in some of those pictures (the patch that seems to be based on Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" graphic), that is a patch worn on NASA's EVA suits to honor past EVAs. As I mentioned, the graphic is based on the famous "Vitruvian Man" sketch be Da Vinci, and the five stars on it are meant to commemorate famous "first" EVAs by NASA in the past -- Ed White's first spacewalk (first by NASA), Apollo 11's first EVA, The first Skylab EVA, the first shuttle EVA, and the first ISS EVA)

More infomation:
www.spacetoys.com...

jazz10
then the obvious one..........no stars yet again yet the the astronaught is quite visible?

I addressed this in another post above, but basically the daylight side of earth pictures are take with a camera more set to "daylight" exposure settings, therefore the exposure time and aperture side are not enough for stars to show up in pictures.

The other pictures in the OP that DO show stars were taken on the night side of earth, and the exposure settings were such (long exposure time and or/wider aperture setting) that more light could get into the camera, thus making the stars visible in the final picture.

Its the same reason we can't see stars in most images taken from Apollo on the Moon. The Moon was reflective in the direct sunlight, and the Apollo camera exposure levels need to be low (so the images would not be over-exposed), thus the stars did not show up in the pictures.

jazz10
reply to post by smurfy

 

Nice post ........but

Notice the one with the moon?
What's up with it? There seems to be a dark seemingly editied side?

Then we also have the insignia on the uniform when did they change it?

Theres also one with a blur as if an edited image lol

then the obvious one..........no stars yet again yet the the astronaught is quite visible?

I didn't have time to study the pictures individually, in fact I was going to put up a few more but I was dsn'd for some time.

There are more stars visible in some pictures. than others, whether a dark picture or not. I guess that the astronaut has plenty of time to set up a good subject picture like a pro photographer, and they are good pictures.

It never fails to amaze me at the thin thread that separates us from absolute oblivion.
We take so much for granted.

That first photo needs a caption with an arrow that reads:

YOU ARE HERE!

...i'd give a star, three kudos, a high five, and a fifty percent
discount coupon to Ling's House of Chinese to anyone who would
make on for

Beautiful pictures. Earth, when viewed from space, looks so...small. Especially the further out the picture is taken, i.e. the "pale blue dot" picture, really gives you a sense of how tiny and insignificant Earth is in the grand scheme of things.

S-n-F OP. I had to save most of these pictures so I can use them as a screensaver.

HomerinNC

What's that in the upper center.????

edit on 3/2/2014 by HomerinNC because: (no reason given)

Lens flare - if you download it and zoom in you can see it better.

S&F! Great find Smurfy, best wallpaper photos ever!
Thanks for sharing
ken

reply to post by mark1167


It's beautiful, isn't it? I didn't know what the faint yellow green glow was that they were calling airglow so decided to look it up.

Airglow

Airglow is caused by various processes in the upper atmosphere, such as the recombination of atoms, which were photoionized by the sun during the day, luminescence caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere and chemiluminescence caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions at heights of a few hundred kilometres. It is not noticeable during the daytime because of the scattered light from the sun.

We can even take the breathtaking complexity of the earth for granted, too, because we just don't usually see it. Learned something today.

Awesome picture indeed!! What a sensation that would be eh?
I will see your Bruce M and raise you a VanDamm…with anti gravity spits! haha