Categories: EarthEarth Observation

Earth Day Timelapse

In honor of Earth Day, enjoy this beautiful timelapse compiled by science educator James Drake, who put together one of the first ISS flyover videos. This video was created from images produced by the Russian geostationary Electro-L Weather Satellite, and the images are some of the largest whole disk images of our planet, as the satellite is orbiting at about 40,000 km. Each image is 121 megapixels, and the resolution is 1 kilometer per pixel. They are taken every half hour in four different wavelengths of light — three visible, and one infrared. The infrared light is reflected by forests and vegetation, which appear orange in these images. Enjoy!

See more at Drake’s Planet Earth web page, including a zoomable, full resolution image of Earth, as well as other image downloads.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/