We are back from experiencing technical difficulties.

In June 2007, the Space Shuttle crew (STS-117) visiting the International Space Station (ISS) observed spectacular polar mesospheric clouds over north-central Asia (top). The red-to-dark region at the bottom of the image is the dense part of the Earth’s atmosphere. For more like this see Earth From Space.

Image taken by an astronaut on an extra vehicular activity or “space-walk”.

Better late than never… This is taken from The International Space Station of STS123 a few months back.

Since I have been posting so many images from STS-118 recently, I started rummaging through the Space Shuttle archives at the NASA website. One image stood apart from the rest as completely unreal. Even as a thumbnail, I assumed it was “space art” or some kind of promotional image used on a poster and almost didn’t even click on it. However, this is not a composite, collage or painting. It is actually an image of astronaut Joseph R. Tanner from STS-82 taken back in 1997.

Take a look at what can be seen in here. It is like the entire Shuttle program in one snapshot. There is the obvious… the sunburst, crescent Earth, back end of the Shuttle Orbiter itself and of course the astronaut. Take a closer look and there is more at a glance… In Tanner’s visor is the reflection of the other spacewalker Gregory J. Harbaugh who took the image and attached to Tanner’s arm is the small checklist of tasks that astronauts use on such difficult tasks such as spacewalks.

The original exposure was quite grainy and lots of color noise due to the low-light conditions. So it was cleaned up a bit color-wise and a duplicate of the image itself has been blurred and screened over the other. This gives the image a sort of “romantic” glow but more importantly helps reduce the noise while maintaining the image’s overall details.

On a note of interest, STS-82 also happens to be one of the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions which extended the life of that most valuable scientific program.

Yet another from 118.

One of the best details of this one is that you can see an astronaut intentionally peeking out of the second window on the left. Seeing a person looking out the window reminds us how real it is. It’s like seeing a friend in a car go by… only our friend’s car is floating in the hostile vacuum of space.

While looking for stunning images from STS-119, came up with this missed gem from 118. Again… was there a photographer on that mission?

The Ron Howard documentary “In the Shadow of the Moon”, came to theaters on September 7th. How did I miss this? See the trailer here.

Something impressive seems to be happening on STS-118 (the Space Shuttle mission currently in orbit)… Photography.

Surely there are many excellent images to be had from previous Shuttle missions, but the images coming from STS-118 are really something to see. Perhaps one of the astronauts doing the EVAs (extra vehicular activities) has a degree in photography? At any rate, this site’s recent effort to give Earth it’s fair presence on this site has to take advantage of some of these fantastic images coming from NASA.

If you would like to see more check out the current mission’s multimedia gallery here or digg the story here.

You have probably seen this image of the Earth before. This was the way the Earth appeared to the final astronauts to land on the moon in 1972. It has since become the quintessential Earth portrait, used more often than any other global image of the Earth. This is probably due to its beauty but also worth mentioning the relative rarity with which we get to see a full globe image taken of the Earth in one snapshot. Only missions and probes that leave the vicinity of the Earth are able to do this and some other popular Earth portraits have been taken by Galileo, Messenger… there is the famous Earth/Moon portrait taken by Voyager 1 and of course several from various Apollo missions.

Earthrise as seen from Apollo 11 as it approached its historic landing.

Managed to make the more common wallpaper size 1024×768 for the 14 most recent wallpaper posts (started with set 05 images, 1-4 to come). Download zip file here. Some were not produced as they just didn’t translate so easily into the format. However, the opposite is true in some cases such as for this image of the Martian south pole. Its resolution was hopelessly low for the larger landscape format, so now with the smaller size it was possible (just barely) to get it posted as a wallpaper.

Included in the set for download are the images pictured at the top and for the sake of google search, here they are listed out:

• 1024×768 Wallpaper of CALLISTO at half view, moon of JUPITER
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of EARTH from APOLLO landing site
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of EUROPA, moon of JUPITER
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of JUPITER
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of MARS region of DEUTERONILUS (not shown)
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of MARS surface at HUSBAND HILL
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of MARS
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of PHOEBE, moon of SATURN
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of RHEA, moon of SATURN
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN, crescent view (not shown)
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN from above the NORTHERN POLE
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN globe
• 1024×768 Wallpaper of SPACE WALK
• 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of TETHYS, moon of SATURN

Ed White is the first American space walker, which took place on Mercury 7. Sadly, he later died on the ground in the tragic Apollo 1 flash fire which took place during a test run. The accident took the lives of 3 astronauts before Apollo even got off the ground.

Note: I erroneously labeled this wallpaper as Mercury 7 and not Gemini 4. Image has been corrected.

Image Note: Some of the Earth image at the far left has been extended in Photoshop to fill out the space. The original image was square.

Trying to get some decent Apollo images on here from time to time. So many of these images are so often seen that I want to focus on the ones that really are great but are rarely seen.

Seeing the size of Earth as it really appears from the surface of the moon reminds me of this wallpaper that I grew up with in my room as a child. I always assumed it was an actual image, but in reality the Earth appears about 1/20 the size and Earth would never phase in shadow from north to south under any circumstance! (I missed that obvious flaw as pointed out by Paul Neave). I beleive they still sell this wallpaper as I still see it around occasionally at stores and other public spaces (no pun). In addition to this image, you also see the Earth from moon shots taken while in- moon-orbit which also gives the Earth a far larger appearance… but I suspect that some good zoom lenses were likely utilized to get those looks as well.