Behold this HD timelapse video of the view aboard the International Space Station (ISS). I can’t find first-hand information on its author, but PopSci claims that it was created by a certain James Drake, who stitched together 600 publicly available images shot from the ISS. The cities’ lights look great, especially together with the frequent thunderstorms lighting up the clouds (watch in HD and full-screen)!
I found it hard to guess the location, but here’s some meta-information from Infinity Imagined, presumably James Drake’s Tumblr:
This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America […] Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the Earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.
I made a quick approximate sketch of the trajectory (north to south):
In the video it takes about a minute to travel from Vancouver Island to Chile. In reality, the ISS travels at about 350 km elevation, 52° inclination and 28.000 km/h and thus has a full orbit length of about 90 minutes.
Bonus: Mr. Drake curates a formidable collection of space images on his Tumblr.
(via PopSci and Fuzzy Tolerance)
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