Earth From Space: NASA's Blue Marble East

NASA has had a long history of great images, and this one is no different (although it's a little dated). This picture shows the Earth as seen from space, prominently displaying the blue hues of the oceans and brown tints of land. This is NASA's Blue Marble East.

The name "Blue Marble" refers to one of NASA's most popular photographs showing the Earth in its entirety. The early photo was taken by the crew of Apollo 17 and shows a perfectly illuminated blue planet, with swirling white clouds, deep blue oceans and a clearly defined African continent. The name "Blue Marble" was coined by the astronauts because of its appearance. Since then, the name has been applied to different NASA images of Earth.

In early 2012, NASA released another image, this time a composite picture of Earth called "Blue Marble 2012". The high resolution picture quickly became one of the most downloaded images in NASA's history. Just like the original Blue Marble, the 2012 version featured a beautifully illuminated sphere, this time with North America prominently in the center.

This particular image was taken in 2007, and offers a different view of the Earth. Here, the South, Southeast, and Eastern parts of Asia are highlighted, along with the whole of Australia. Blue Marble 2007 East also shows some night time images, as this is actually a composite of different photographs taken by different NASA satellites. The above picture offers an interesting view of the Earth, from the green-tinted chlorophyll laden coastlines of Australasia to the evening metropolitan lights of Japan, all set against the darkness of space.

There's more history on NASA's Blue Marble East image on their Flickr page. Wikipedia's Blue Marble entry also has other information on other photographs with the same name. To see more images of Earth from space, click here for more Outer Space photography.

Self Portraits of Mars Rovers

A few days ago, NASA released this beautiful panoramic image of the Martian Landscape. While majestic by itself, the view is enhanced by the presence of the newest Mars Rover, Curiosity, in the middle of the picture, on top of the hill overlooking the whole planet. The photograph shows just how far NASA has reached in terms of being able to beam back images of robots on other planets, but this picture isn't the first self picture of a robot on Mars. These are some of the self-portraits of all Mars rovers to date.

To start with, the image above shows the Mars Pathfinder which landed on Mars in 1997. The mosaic is centered around the fixed lander called the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and prominently shows the solar cells which powered the station. While technically not a rover, the Pathfinder package did contain a mobile robot named Sojourner which can be seen in the upper left-hand corner near Yogi Rock.

The Sojourner rover lasted only 83 sols (Earth days), but the Pathfinder mission was considered a success in that it was the first endeavor of its kind since NASA launched the Viking Program in 1976. Aside from the scientific findings of the planet's surface, the program proved that the airbag-method of landing was feasible. The small robot Sojourner also showed success in being able to maneuver on a foreign planet.

The above self photograph was taken by the rover Spirit (more formally known as Mars Exploration Rover - A) in 2007, midway through its life on Mars. The rover  is one of two identical Mars rovers, the other being Opportunity. The rover was launched from Earth in 2003 and it arrived on Mars in early 2004.

The rover's panoramic camera shows the heavy dust build up on its solar panels, which greatly affected its ability to charge its batteries (this earlier self-portrait shows what the rover would look like with relatively clean panels). While strong winds would sometimes clean away the dust build up, this tendency to gather debris on itself would have a detrimental impact on the rover's life. The robot became stuck in soft soil in 2009, but continued to perform in a stationary position. Spirit sent its last communication in 2010, and NASA formally ceased communications attempts in 2011, after 2,208 successful working sols.

This last, shadowy portrait shows the still active Mars Exploration Rover B, also known as Opportunity, the twin brother of the Spirit rover. While the two robots landed on Mars at about the same time in 2004 (albeit in different locations), only Opportunity has continued to perform consistently, surpassing its original 90-sol mission. The rover celebrated it's 3,000 sol in the middle of last year, and it's still being used to explore the Meridiani Planum somewhere around Mars' equator.

On the other hand, the header photograph shows the youngest of the Martian rovers, Curiosity. This robot is about the size of a sedan, a mammoth compared to the earlier sojourner which was only the size of a milk crate. Curiosity's mission is to investigate the climate and geology of Mars, and help determine whether the planet's environment is conducive to microbial life.

For more information about these self portraits of all Mars rovers, check out the NASA's JPL Mars Exploration Rover homepage and mission page. For more photographs from beyond Earth, check out the Outer Space category of this blog.

Michael Benson: Planetfall and the Edge of Space

Images of spacemen floating in the middle of nowhere can be quite awe-inspiring, but even barren outer landscapes can illicit the same response. Outer space offers hundred of thousands of great photo possibilities, but it's actually finding great images that's the tricky part. Fortunately, Michael Benson has saved everyone else plenty of time and trouble by going through the best photographs currently available on the edge of space, and collecting them in his book, Planetfall.

Michael Benson is an artist and photojournalist who is well-known for his publications and exhibitions on outer space. He has previously released two books filled with photographs on the subject, Beyond and Far Out. His latest book, Planetfall, is a continuation of this off-planet story. Unlike the usual images of space, Benson's photographs look like 100 percent computer-generated imagery. They are in fact all real, only that they have been digitally edited to make them look larger than life.

Benson's love affair with space began when he was small, collecting trading cards with outer space related images, and then later on watching the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This fascination with everything off-earth has led to his becoming a journalist and photographer, but his current work focuses more on the best of photography and art to produce the images of Planetfall, a term he describes as "the moment when a view comes off the edge of a planet."

As anyone might have guessed, none of these images were taken by Benson himself. Rather, the original pictures were taken by robot satellites and spacecrafts launched by NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and the like. Fortunately, these agencies provide these photographs for free to the public. Unfortunately, most of the original images resemble nothing like the fantastic pictures seen here.

Instead, the original RAW images are usually grainy, black-and-white, pictures that look nothing like these color pictures. In order to get a good picture, Benson has to scroll through the public images and find a good subject that has at least two images of it, one taken with a red filter and another with a blue filter. For the best results, three images are required, with the other taken with a green filter. Benson then makes sure that all images align perfectly before applying a little Photoshop magic. With a little more tweaking, the results literally look out of this world.

In most cases, Benson acts as an artist, combining raw data files in order to create majestic visual artworks. In others, he acts like an editor, sifting through hundreds of good images to find the best ones. In all cases, he acts as a responsible photographer, only choosing the best out of all the tens of thousands of images available online. Any other hobbyist would have quit in the first few hours, but Benson's passion led him to uncover true gems of space photography.

In all cases, Benson's images are the perfect marriage of science and art, showing how truly beautiful and still be mysterious outer space is, and even presenting a different view of Earth itself.

Michael Benson currently doesn't have a website, but his images can be found in the book, Planetfall: New Solar System Visions. His previous works Beyond: A Solar System Voyage and Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle are still available and offer a glimpse of the edge of space. For more outer space images, check out the Space category of this blog.

Bruce McCandless: Floating Astronaut in Space

NASA has had a great knack for producing awe-inspiring images. In its history of space exploration, the most jaw-dropping photographs are usually those that involve stars and galaxies thousands of light-years away. A few other great images, however, are much closer to home. In this iconic image of a lonely spaceman stuck between earth and nothingness, NASA was able to successfully perform a free spacewalk for the very first time. This is the story of Bruce McCandless and the photograph of the floating astronaut in space.

The flying spaceman in the picture is Captain Bruce McCandless II, credited for having made the first untethered free flight in space. Previously, and even now, any Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs) performed by astronauts were done so with a tether. Spacewalks were thus limited to the length of the tether. With the new Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), spacewalks could be performed untethered.

The free flight was done on February 12, 1984 with the nitrogen jet backpack. McCandless traveled some 320 feet away from the space shuttle Challenger, farther than any astronaut had attempted ever before. The resulting view showed a small astronaut against the blackness of space and the pale blues and whites of the earth.

Check out NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day or their Multimedia Section for more details on Bruce McCandless and the floating astronaut in space image. For more NASA and Space related images, check out previous posts under this category.

Earthrise: A Christmas Postcard from Apollo 8

It's not Christmas Day yet, but this fantastic image is fit be shared on any season or occasion, although it has more weight on this day. The picture, called Earthrise, is by itself breathtaking enough to be featured on this blog, but it's doubly special because of the occasion on which it was taken by the crew of Apollo 8.

Earthrise was photographed by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968. The crew was supposed to orbit the Moon as part of its mission (which it did ten times), but with all the planning and monitoring that went into the mission, they didn't expect the scene that would greet them as they made their turn out of the darkness of the Moon.

As the spacecraft made its turn, the astronauts were greeted by the bright, blue Earth against the grey horizon of the Moon and the black emptiness of Space, prompting mission commander Frank Borman to exclaim, "Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty." While Command Module Pilot James Lovell steered the spacecraft, Borman and Anders took several black-and-white and color photos of the scene unfolding before their eyes, but it was Anders' color shot that became the definitive Earthrise. Later on, the crew would give their Christmas Eve broadcast, watched or heard by a billion humans back on their home planet.

The original image shows the Earth peeking out to the left of the Moon's horizon on the right (as can be seen below). This was the view that greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts on that fateful day. The more popular picture, however, shows the Earthrise in the landscape position (as can be seen in the header photo above).

To all blog readers, Merry Christmas! Or if you prefer, Happy Holidays! Or if you're not into that kind of stuff, have a great weekend! More information on the Earthrise image can be found on the Great Images of NASA website and NASA multimedia page. You can also listen to the original broadcast (mp3 link) of the Apollo 8 crew as they made this historic Christmas Eve postcard image.

The Voyager Golden Record: Images of Earth as Seen by Extraterrestrials

Last week's post on what the Earth looks like during an eclipse garnered a lot of Ooohs and Aaahs in the comments because of the unusual view it provided of the Earth. But what kind of view would extraterrestrials find of this planet? Fortunately for them, they won't have to travel too far to find pictures of Earth and her inhabitants as they can just look at the images preserved on the Voyager Golden Record.

The Voyager Golden Record is the famous vinyl record that was sent out to space a few decades ago in the hopes of it encountering an alien civilization along its voyage. It is notable for its collection of pictures and sounds that were meticulously selected to represent the Earth and its inhabitants as of its creation. In essence, the recording is the sum total of humanity and their home.

There are two golden records, actually gold-plated copper records, one on board each of the Voyager spacecrafts launched in 1977. Both spacecrafts are on a trajectory to reach interstellar space (or space outside of the solar system), with Voyager 1 being the most distant man-made object from Earth.

The contents of the record include over 116 images of people in action as well as features of the Earth and solar system, along with spoken greetings in 55 languages and different sound clips of the both natural and manmade objects. It also includes 90-minutes of music from different countries and genres, with the baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach being the most represented with three of his concertos and solo pieces included.

The NASA committee in-charge of selecting the record's contents was chaired by Carl Sagan and included images that they believed were descriptive of this planet. They include pictures of the planets along with illustrations of the human anatomy and the structure of the DNA. They also included some eclectic choices that provide an interesting look at the day-to-day life of humans.

Photographs included in the vinyl include the heights of humanity's technological advances such as an X-ray of a hand to man's physical prowess like the multiple exposure image of a gymnast on a balance beam to more artistic views of the planet such as Ansel Adams' 1942 black-and-white photograph of the Tetons and the Snake River. However, they also included more mundane activities like a simultaneous demonstration of people licking, eating and drinking, and even an image of someone shopping in a supermarket.

Why would Carl Sagan's committee choose such commonplace events such as the two mentioned above?. Maybe after such a display of technological and artistic prowess, they didn't want to scare away the aliens? Or maybe they realized that it's the little things that make humanity what it is today? Whatever the reason behind their selection, the 100 or so images provide viewers with an opportunity to reflect about themselves and maybe help people realize that eating grapes in a grocery store is just as human as performing a space walk in an astronaut' suit.

The NASA JPL website has more information about the Voyager Golden Record. There's also this website with all of the images, sounds, greetings and music on the record. Another website, the Golden Record Revisited, provides an updated account of what kind of images of Earth extraterrestrials would see if the spacecrafts were launched today. While they're now relative hard to find, look for Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Intersteller Record or Murmurs of Earth the Voyager Interstellar Record Commemorative Edition, as they contain the complete images and sounds of the recording. You could also try the remix in Scrambles of Earth: Voyager Interstellar Record Re. Aside from the images, you should definitely listen to the music of the Voyager Golden Record with this Youtube playlist.