NASA Captures the Rising Sun Lighting Up the Midnight Sky

The International Space Station snapped a particularly beautiful photo of the various layers of our globe's atmosphere with the rising sun peeking out to say hello, while touring over the Greek islands around midnight just a few weeks ago.

NASA's Earth Observatory, which posted the photo, pointed out the polar mesopheric clouds, or "night-shining" clouds as they called them, which are seen at twilight. Usually the clouds are only lit up by the sun when it's setting, however this particular shot shows the rising sun inking its rays across the low clouds. [Earth Observatory, Via: io9], Via: Gizmodo

ALLIGATOR TURNS BLUE

“This alligator could be excused for being snappy – she is clearly feeling blue. The large gator looks a stunning shade of blue as the bright morning sky reflects off her wet back. She appeared to change from her usual dark brown to black, grey and blue over the space of just a few minutes as the sun rose over the lake at 7am. But unlike a chameleon, the change of colour was not a conscious decision. It was purely down to the sky reflecting off her shiny scales. Biology professor Louis Guillette, 55, took the picture on a lake next to his home in Gainesville, Florida, United States.” LINK

Norwegian Sunrise

Cineflex – Norwegian sunrise from Leif Holand on Vimeo.

Leif Holland captured these magnificent shots from a helicopter zooming around the peaks of the Sunnmøre region of western Norway. A majestic reminder of the beauty of tall, massive rocks. Via: Neatorama

Analemma

Photograph by Vasilij Rumyantsev ( Crimean Astrophysical Obsevatory)

If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma. The Sun’s apparent shift is caused by the Earth’s motion around the Sun when combined with the tilt of the Earth’s rotation axis. The Sun will appear at its highest point of the analemma during summer and at its lowest during winter. Analemmas created from different Earth latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. The analemma pictured to the left was built up by Sun photographs taken from 1998 August through 1999 August from Ukraine. The foreground picture from the same location was taken during the early evening in 1999 July.

Via: APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day), Via: TwistedSifter

Far-Out Photo: Sunrise in Space

This sunrise was photographed with a handheld camera by astronauts during space shuttle mission STS-127 on July 17, 2009. Credit: NASA.

Astronauts orbiting Earth see a lot more sunrises and sunsets that those of us stranded on the surface. They circle the planet every 90 minutes, and the sun just keeps coming.

A new picture of a sunrise from space was taken with a handheld camera by astronauts Friday on the day the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station during shuttle mission STS-127.

Earth's atmosphere appears as a thin crescent shape ranging from white to blue to purple, while the planet in the foreground is a black as the void beyond.

From the surface of Earth, the sun rises because of Earths endless, 24-hour rotation. From here, sunrises and sunsets are often orange or red because the light has more atmosphere to pass through to get to your eye when the sun is near the horizon, and only the red light, with a longer wavelength then blue light, can make it.

The astronauts see little of that from their perch more than 200 miles up, but the effect is still beautiful. LINK

The Grand Canyon: Sunrise & Sunset

"Sunrise: 6:52 a.m."
"Sunset: 4:23 p.m."


The Grand Canyon at sunrise and sunset, the rays that paint the iconic canyon at dawn and dusk give a new perspective. LINK