Incredible Pics from ISS by NASA astronaut Wheelock

These are some of the most AMAZING pictures i have ever seen. To view Earth fro this perspective is truly breathtaking! Looking at that shiny blue firmament i finally understand what the book of Genesis meant when it said "separate the waters from the waters", even the astronaut said that that was the only thing that separates our planet from the others (read the comment he wrote for picture #10). Maybe not those exact words, but you get the picture (no pun intended) LOL!!

reply to post by foxhoundone


That picture was taken from outside the station, looking into the Cupola (built by an Italian company, not Russian). The person in the window is inside the station, so he doesn't need a suit.

The Cupola has shutters on all the windows that can be closed to provide protection from micrometeoroids and orbital debris:

Amazing pictures. Thanks for sharing.
I wish we all could view earth from space, just to get some real perspective and lesser ego.

Truthfully honest with my comment here;

I did shed a few tears over those pictures. We truly do live on a beautiful planet, it is about time us residents -along with our political class- understand this.

There's only one thing bothering me about one of these photos. I know i sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist but...

I think you would need thicker gloves to keep your fingers from literally freezing.

They look a little thin to me. What say you guys?



I blew the image up in PS and used the levels filter to bring out some more detail. The colored "dots" are not stars, they are called jpeg artifact.

reply to post by realeyes


Those gloves are pretty thick. When looking at the whole suit they may not appear so, but keep in mind the suit is a fair bit larger than the person inside it.



And you want a lot of insulation, both to keep the heat out in the sunlight and the heat in in the shade.

They do have built-in heaters they can use, as well:

en.wikipedia.org...

Another feature incorporated into the new ISS suits are an additional battery to power heaters built into the glove, allowing astronauts to keep their hands warm during nighttime passages on each 95-minute orbit.

But that says it's a new feature, the battery powered heater in the gloves. What about the first model? No one lost any fingers to frostbite? The first photo just looks like an long cuffed heavy duty work glove. The second looks more like it belongs with the suit, Notice how thick the gloves fingers are compared to the guys fingers. Looks like something I wear to hunt when it's 8 degrees out and my hands still freeze. Isn't space around -300 or something like that?

Originally posted by realeyes
But that says it's a new feature, the battery powered heater in the gloves. What about the first model? No one lost any fingers to frostbite? The first photo just looks like an long cuffed heavy duty work glove. The second looks more like it belongs with the suit, Notice how thick the gloves fingers are compared to the guys fingers. Looks like something I wear to hunt when it's 8 degrees out and my hands still freeze. Isn't space around -300 or something like that?

That first photo is the same kind of glove in the second, I assure you.

spaceflight.nasa.gov...

Astronaut Michael E. Fossum, STS-121 mission specialist, inspects Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) Detailed Test Objective (DTO) box hardware during a training session at Johnson Space Center. Fossum used a glove from a training version of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuit.

Yeah, the heater is (relatively) new, added for comfort during the long spacewalks involved in space station construction. Temperature doesn't work quite the same in a vacuum as it does here on the surface of the Earth. There are three methods of heat transfer: convection, conduction, and radiation. Convection is when heat is transfered from an object to a gas or fluid in contact with it. This is primarily how a radiator in your house heats the air. Air moves over the hot radiator and becomes warmer, moving on and making room for new, colder air to move in and be heated. Obviously that's not a factor in the vacuum of space. Conduction is when heat is transfered from an object to another solid object in direct contact, without movement of the medium as in convection. Like if you hold the end of a metal rod and put the other end in a flame, you will eventually get burned as the heat conducts along the rod. Again, not a big problem in space as the suits and gloves are well insulated, preventing direct contact between the occupant and other objects. Finally, radiation is when heat is transfered by electromagnetic waves. When items are heated, they emit photons in the infrared range. When these photons impact an object, the energy is transfer to the object in the form of heat. This is how the sun heats the earth, and is the type of heat transfer that must be dealt with in space. It is also the most inefficient method of transferring heat (which is why your double-walled thermos with a vacuum between the walls can keep your coffee so hot for so long).

Any object above absolute zero emits infrared radiation. In the shade in space, it won't be receiving any substantial incoming infrared radiation from the sun, so as it continues to emit it's own radiation, it will cool down. In the sun, it will be receiving copious amounts of infrared radiation from the sun, so it will heat up. But the insulation on the suits will slow both the rate at which the heat is lost and gained. Since radiation is all they have to worry about, it's not like submerging your gloved hand in liquid nitrogen, since there you will be dealing with convection.

Inside the suit, the temperature is well regulated. And the gloves do have some air bladder space to allow circulation of the regulated air inside the suit. So while the models without the battery heaters might have resulted in some cold, achey hands, it wouldn't be enough to cause any damage.

reply to post by Mythkiller


many thanks for the link mythkiller. it took me back to the nineties when i used to stay up and watch space night!
wouldn't it be great to have hd moveable cameras on the iss that we could all access.
guess thats wishful thinking given the control measures in place.
regards f.