Comments on: "Cities in Japan have a distinct blue-green cast."

"Cities in Japan have a distinct blue-green cast."

Dave Faris — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:55:42 -0800

Cities at Night, an Orbital Tour Around the World was made when astronauts added stabilizers to the cameras on the orbital space station, allowing them to get sharp, crisp nighttime images.

By: nevercalm

nevercalm — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:01:46 -0800

They made the "tracking system" out of a hand drill?? I'm really impressed, and amazed that they're able to get such consistently high-quality images.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:01:47 -0800

Crazy beautiful.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:09:57 -0800

An hand drill ! A friggin hand drill ! Viva le Geeks, viva !!!

By: gemmy

gemmy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:10:04 -0800

Yea, this is really awesome. I especially liked the way you could tell some parts of cities apart only based on the difference between types of light - and how they could tell they were over Japan based on the color.

By: Sam.Burdick

Sam.Burdick — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:11:48 -0800

I can haz for google earth, plz? kthnx!

By: splatta

splatta — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:12:52 -0800

And then someone goes and uploads it to YouTube where all that work for sharp, and crisp images was for naught.

By: krautland

krautland — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:12:58 -0800

okay, someone please post a link to hi-res images. I so want this as a desktop background.

By: eriko

eriko — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:18:31 -0800

They made the "tracking system" out of a hand drill? Pretty classic trick, actually: the barn door tracking mount. On the earth, you can track the sky without a motor, you just turn the screw 1/4 turn every given interval -- usually, you pick a screw thread and knob size so you make a turn every 10 or 15 seconds. With the IIS, it was moving to fast to spin the tracking screw by hand, so they probably rigged up a gearing system, based on the speed of the hand drill, to turn the tracking screw at the right speed. Or, knowing NASA, they had proportional control of the drill speed, and they just set it to the correct speed.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:19:21 -0800

Interesting. Thanks, Dave Faris.

By: Flashman

Flashman — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:19:29 -0800

"The brightest spot on earth. Las Vegas, Nevada. A beacon, for humanity."

By: rtha

rtha — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:20:08 -0800

Extraodinary. They remind me of neurons. If I were an astronaut, I would spend all my time looking out the window of the space shuttle, weeping in astonishment and awe.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:20:36 -0800

And then someone goes and uploads it to YouTube where all that work for sharp, and crisp images was for naught. Of course, that's the price we pay for free and instant access. Kinda like all the music that gets recorded so well and then gets disseminated as mp3s. Quality vs. cost and all that...

By: hal9k

hal9k — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:22:11 -0800

I have one of North Korea whenever I turn my laptop off.

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:23:27 -0800

And on side note: Las Vegas beacon of humanity? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

By: Neilopolis

Neilopolis — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:30:13 -0800

Las Vegas... the ultimate lighthouse for aliens. It's what the Mafia secretly dreamed of.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:38:46 -0800

Really cool. You gotta love the ingenuity and the obvious delight those guys show. Of course, the guys over at the CIA are looking at this and having a good laugh at the amateurs. "Call us when you can read license plates from up there. Bwahahahaaaa..."

By: urbanwhaleshark

urbanwhaleshark — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:42:17 -0800

Commentary. In the style of. William Shatner. Loved this.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:56:05 -0800

That is awesome and very well improvised....but why can't the ISS already just take pictures of Earth?

By: danman_d

danman_d — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:57:47 -0800

It's been said, but has ANYONE found links to any hi-res versions of these images? NASA normally does a pretty good job cataloging their photos, but I haven't found any of these on the Visible Earth site... it would be a shame for all that ingenuity to go to waste on a Youtube video.

By: urbanwhaleshark

urbanwhaleshark — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:01:46 -0800

A couple of "hi-res" here, but they're really just blown up versions of the original. Tho it's neat there's one of London.

By: bystander

bystander — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:03:05 -0800

Lovely pics, and it is cool to see them jury rig a tracking mount, you can't pop down to the hardware store if you need some wingnuts. But NASA can make anything boring, that commentary was lame, and surely somebody from New York will post soon to complain about being left off.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:05:27 -0800

Here's one (Los Angeles, 2mb) and another, (London, 1/8mb) from the mission website, but they're disappointingly grainy.

By: gauchodaspampas

gauchodaspampas — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:17:06 -0800

This is fantastic.

By: Stylus Happenstance

Stylus Happenstance — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:17:44 -0800

Somebody get these guys a Flickr account or something.

By: fuq

fuq — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:27:41 -0800

Awesome sauce

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:47:08 -0800

Terrific post. Thanks.

By: Kikkoman

Kikkoman — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:50:31 -0800

I like how menacing Don sounds near the end: "We now have a database of 4,000 images of cities at night. Systematically taken all around the world." You just watch yourself! I have the death sentence on twelve systems!

By: ssg

ssg — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:34:08 -0800

The photos are available from NASA. To see the photos that the video is about, search with ISS006 for the mission and "night" in the features field. You'll pull up a lot of photos, but you can search by city in the features field too. The images are available at ~2mb per, but they are fairly grainy.

By: orelius

orelius — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:35:59 -0800

Sounds like it was narrated by Stephen Hawking.

By: sy

sy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:36:20 -0800

Seldom do I make it through a ten minute youtube video of anything, but this was worth it. Good on you.

By: alicesshoe

alicesshoe — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:39:12 -0800

Fucking amazing. Madrid, looks like an octopus. It's like a deep sea dive discovering luminous sea creatures. Great find, Dave Faris, thanks for that. [That voice over, fucking hell, who wrote that shit, please. Easy on the drama, just the facts, M'am.]

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:05:39 -0800

They made the "tracking system" out of a hand drill?? Even better, it looks like the same drill I have. IN SPACE!

By: gen

gen — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:23:53 -0800

Amazing. My only request: next time use Orbital for the orbital tour. The music was a bit cheezy.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:41:49 -0800

[wishes there were less night-time light, so everyone could see how infinitely tiny we are in this universe, and maybe be a little more careful about what we do to our fishbowl earth.]

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:52:01 -0800

Really, really awesome and well worth watching. The best part was that they didn't just show the pics - there was a whole lot of detail interpretation pointing out things like the different colors caused by different lighting technologies, and the crazy cowpath layout of European cities vs. the cardinal-points grid of American cities. Thanks!

By: Scoo

Scoo — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:35:16 -0800

I've always enjoyed the strange, raspy cadence of Don Pettit's delivery. He did a bunch of educational science videos while on the ISS; His descriptions of his demonstrations, while technical and precise, display an obvious enthusiasm for the poetry and beauty of physics. I think he's really an artist at heart.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:57:31 -0800

Well-lit image of the improvised barndoor tracker.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:39:49 -0800

I thought the narator gave a certain nifty quality to the video. You could tell he was really into what he was talking about. True, he didn't have the polished narration quality we see in documentaries, but that's the point, this isn't a documentary made in Hollywood with professional actors, its a video made by the people actually involved. Its rough, no denying it, but in some cirucmstances rough is a good quality. The pix themselves are fantastic.

By: NekulturnY

NekulturnY — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:23:28 -0800

Loved that commentator. Never heard him before. He should make audio books of hard boiled crime writing.