We live in an awesome time when today’s technology can bring us computer-generated imagery of almost anything we can imagine and make it nearly indistinguishable from reality. Even with all the truly unbelievable vistas created using CGI, you still can’t beat the real thing. For example, the picture above is a Hubble Telescope image of the aptly named Ant Nebula. It’s real, it’s beautiful and it’s so awesome looking that your first reaction might be to think it was computer generated.
That’s nature for you, showing us time and again that not only is truth stranger than fiction, but it’s also far, far more beautiful. To help prove that point, we’ve included some videos found on NASA’s website of just how beautiful the Earth looks from space.
This first video features time-lapse video sequences taken by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the ISS. These gorgeous scenes are accompanied by the song “Walking in the Air,” by Howard Blake.
From NASA’s own description:
This video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station. Set to the song “Walking in the Air,” by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers around the world, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays. The sequences are as follows: :01 – Stars over southern United States :08 – US west coast to Canada :21 – Central Europe to the Middle East :36 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean :54 – Storms over Africa 1:08 – Central United States 1:20 – Midwest United States 1:33 – United Kingdom to Baltic Sea 1:46 – Moonset 1:55 – Northern United States to Eastern Canada 2:12 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean 2:32 – Comet Lovejoy 2:53 – Aurora Borealis over Hudson Bay 3:06 – United Kingdom to Central Europe
In this next video, entitled We Are the Explorers, we get a variety of imagery with narration describing why we explore. There is some CGI included as the video talks about the future, but this is mostly inspiring imagery and speech. I’ll let NASA’s own description speak for it.
Why do we explore? Simply put, it is part of who we are, and it is something we have done throughout our history. In NASA’s new video, “We Are the Explorers,” we take a look at that tradition of reaching for things just beyond our grasp and how it is helping us lay the foundation for our greatest journeys ahead.
And just to show that it’s not all work and no play, NASA has a video with a title I never thought I’d see on their website: Angry Birds In Space! This astronaut is definitely having fun on the ISS and managing to teach a little science in the process.
For more videos and beautiful images, visit NASA’s Multimedia Webpage.
Senior Editor for Three If By Space. Tom first became interested in science fiction & science as a very young child thanks to his parents. His earliest memories of enjoying scifi were sitting with his dad watching first-run episodes of the original Star Trek. Although a fan of nearly all forms of scripted television, Tom’s preferences skew heavily toward hard science fiction.
