A satellite's eye-view of our beautiful and beloved planet...

There have been some amazing videos created with photos from the International Space Station, but none quite like this. Tomislav Safundžić, described on his Vimeo page as an 18-year-old who enjoys photography and video editing, composed "This is Our Planet" with photos and video from the Image Science and Analysis Laboratory at the NASA-Johnson Space Center. Edited to "Intro" by The XX, the video offers a spectacular view of the home planet, aurorae, stars, and even parts of the ISS. Col. Ron Garan, an astronaut who has spent 178 days in space, including time aboard the ISS last year, posted the video to his Google+ page on Monday night. The ISS orbits Earth at an average altitude of about 250 miles and travels at around 17,500 miles per hour. It makes roughly 16 trips around the planet every day. For some more time-lapse videos with footage from the ISS, check out The Journey Home, a video that Garan helped make after he returned to Earth last fall. And for some amazing photos, click over to Safundžić's 500px page.


[Source: Huffington Post. Brought to my attention by Lawrence Hultberg]





NOTE TO REGULAR BLOG READERS: I know many of you are disappointed I seem to have stopped focusing on local politics. No, I haven't withdrawn or given up, in fact, I do keep close tabs on what's happening - but I feel there are enough commentators like Dean Johns, Mariam Mokhtar, Rom Nain, and many others who are doing whatever's necessary to neutralize Najib's low-grade, high-cost corporate spin - no point saying the same old thing over and over again and just getting hotter and hotter under the collar. In the end it's really up to each of us to accept complete responsibility for the kind of software we install in our own heart drives. If you're a cari makan me-first survivalist, that's exactly the kind of vicious, violent, deceitful, deadly dull and mindlessly competitive reality you will create for your own posterity.