September 27, 2006

Waterworld

What planet is this?

Water Earth

It’s Earth, of course, viewed from around 9900 miles above a small island called Tetiaora, one of the few bits of land on this half of the planet. It’s weird that there’s a view of earth that’s almost entirely water. I’d love to see an actual photo of this view from space.

Comments

Wait, this isn’t a photograph of this view from space?

It makes me so happy (and strangely— a little scared) to see this! I never knew it existed!

Was that meant to say “9900 feet”? At less than 2 miles that doesn’t seem high enough to me, but since space begins only about 23 miles up, I’m confused.

it says “9900 miles”..

is this a picture or an image of how it would look?

This is above the Pacific Ocean, how can you not know this view of Earth exists?

I noticed this a while ago during zefrank’s earth sandwich thing, maybe it is of interest: pretty much all of Australia has no landmass exactly opposite it. This is true for just about everyplace, actually, but Australia fits in pretty neatly opposite the wet bit between Europe and the Americas.

Remembering that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, nevertheless it’s seldom you see such a view shown. One I have seen was in the “Full Moon” exhibition of NASA photos put together by Michael Light when it was in Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It was taken from an Apollo capsule, showing a part of the southern Pacific with virtually no visible land, and little cloud.
The show had some huge and wonderful things, but that (relatively) small blue one stuck as much as they.

I don’t think it was in the book :( The book is good, but see the exhibition, if you have a chance, to experience an almost life-size wall-covering panorama of a quite alien environment.
There may be what you want in Orbit, a book of astronauts’ photos of Earth. Also have a squiz at visibleearth.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/features/
and look up ‘blue marble’ and NASA

haven’t you guys heard of google earth?

Wow, I feel about as big as an ant…
That was humbling

Wonder how many centuries it’ll be before all angles look like that?