photos of home

August 13, 2014 5:13 AM

Breathtaking collection of images at The Atlantic: Viewing the Earth From Space
posted by flapjax at midnite (13 comments total)

Pretty.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:27 AM on August 13, 2014

I really could look at stuff like this for hours and hours.
posted by nevercalm at 5:38 AM on August 13, 2014

The alluvial fan photo, filled with small fields, captured me. The overlay of natural form and human use is beautiful to my eyes.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:53 AM on August 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yes, Dip Flash, the alluvial fan photo is beautiful. What you say... =)
posted by rmmcclay at 5:56 AM on August 13, 2014

(mefi's own) alan taylor continues to be amazing.
posted by nadawi at 7:13 AM on August 13, 2014

The Namibian mountain is the Brandberg, highest mountain in the country. (The vague caption struck me as odd.)
posted by gubo at 7:29 AM on August 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

The contrast between the night lights of North and South Korea in #13 is pretty striking.
posted by straight at 7:54 AM on August 13, 2014

Very nice photos. I get a kick out of spotting the ISS when it passes overhead. Gives me a smile to think that as I'm looking out at it with a bit of wonder and amazement, the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard might be doing just the same.

The vague caption about that massif in Namibia struck me as odd, too. But for oddity bordering on absurdity in the captions, I vote for the last sentence of caption #15: "A blue and white part of Earth provides the backdrop for the scene."
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 8:46 AM on August 13, 2014

Aww, what the heck...

MetaFilter: A blue and white part of Earth provides the backdrop for the scene.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 8:49 AM on August 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

# 6 looks like imaging of a human brain.

Pictures like these are always so soothing. Whenever there’s too much bad going on in the world, it’s nice to be reminded how beautiful *our world* can be.
posted by NorthernLite at 9:01 AM on August 13, 2014

I found the North Korea image thought provoking. I have seen similar photos, comparing NK's poverty to the rest of its neighbors, but it's quite interesting now to think of how we, who are inundated with electric lights at night increasingly value dark skies, and we, who are afraid of where our unstoppable consumption of resources are leading us, long for a simpler life. No one wants to live in the nightmare of NK, but the brightly lit night skies of South Korea and China don't mean the same thing to me today that they meant when I first saw this image years ago.
posted by feste at 9:01 AM on August 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Amazing images; if I didn't have to work, I'd probably spend the rest of the day gawking at them. Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 10:59 AM on August 13, 2014

The image of Korea reminded me how dark the earth looks on the night flight from Lagos to London so I went off to Mr. Google to look up the figures for Nigeria. Nigeria (world's 7th largest oil producing country) has a kWh per capita consumption of 149 compared to North Korea's 739 and UK's 5472. Which is what happens when you're ruled by a kleptocracy.

Different sources are giving me different figures for the oil producing ranking.
posted by glasseyes at 1:08 PM on August 13, 2014