A time-lapse video of the Earth thanks to the ISS.

One can hardly believe that this is the extent to which beauty is possible on this world.

The International Space Station (ISS) is racing in low Earth orbit at 17,300+ mph. This time-lapse is what it’s like to live from that far away perspective. It reveals the raw planetary nature of our home and the problems that make everyone human. Videos like these help us understand how we share our atmosphere, land, and even existence together on this rock that we’ve seemingly mastered. This video was deemed so powerful that it was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Portraits of Earth and Screenshots from Video

Sunrise

Lights on Earth

Aurora Borealis

Related articles

• Footage from the ISS of the Sun Never Setting (itsabeautifulearth.com)
• ISS to get new crew ASAP (sliceofscifi.com)

Made by my friend Alx from a video filmed by my friend AB for his cousin’s band the Bedlam Six

Bit sweary, I admit, but since I’m currently working my way through The Thick Of It it’s a minor miracle every other word isn’t a multi-hyphenated compound of the unrepeatable end of the English language.

I celebrated the start of my bardo on Wednesday by watching ‘Sleeping In Light’, the wonderful last episode of Babylon 5, and rewatching Casablanca, which I bloody love. I’ve spent the last few weeks working my way through the entirety of B5, and it’s safe to say it’s now one of my favourite shows – I’m a sucker for any kind of SF which deals with big story arcs and lots of non-SF issues (and yes, my favourite Star Trek series was Deep Space 9, thanks for asking), and B5 did it with just the right balance of humour and seriousness. ‘Sleeping In Light’ is exactly the way I’d want my favourite shows to bow out – the episode is just one long goodbye to all the characters I loved (even the ones that didn’t make it that far), and strikes just the right note of bittersweetness I always get when everyone’s stories wrap up nicely – on the one hand it’s all lovely, but on the other it’s all wrapped up.

Casablanca I picked because some of the story elements seemed nicely appropriate, and also because I don’t think I’ve seen it as much as I should’ve and wanted an excuse to take the cellophane off the DVD. Of course, I managed to forget that what I considered the most attractive and appropriate theme – Rick’s reclamation of his idealistic side from his jaded cynicism – comes about as a result of the most personally painful (and also the most famous) theme… I’m not going to go into greater detail in order to at least preserve the meagrest veil of tact, but if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about. It was insanely difficult to watch, not down to any personal reasons but because my family kept interrupting me every ten minutes even after they’d gone out, but it was still worth all the aggravation. I always forget how many classically quotable lines there are in there, and Max Steiner’s treatment of ‘As Time Goes By’ as leitmotif is one of my favourite film scores.

Since then, my time’s mostly been taken up with rehearsals for two different shows – one of which I’m in, another of which I’m shadowing on – but more on those next time. I’ve also been sorting the yearly accounts for the record label, a task which would give any man cause to idly consider various gruesome ways of avoiding having to do it. With any luck, I will never have to mention these ever again.

In order to stave off the boredom this afternoon, I took a walk through the countryside near where I live. I admit, ‘near’ in this case is somewhat relative – it’s a twenty-minute walk to even reach the nearest field, but there is a lot of it there when you get to it. My original plan was to walk to Hough Green station, about halfway between here and Widnes, and then walk home. Thing is, I’m an idiot and failed to account for the fact that it’s November and thus 1) it gets dark early 2) it’s utterly flaming freezing. It’s a bit over an hour’s walk to Hough Green, so the first one wouldn’t have been an issue had I not left my house at 3pm. Given I arrived in Hough Green around ten minutes before the streetlamps came on, it was perhaps fortunate I’d modified my plan so that I caught the train home from Hough Green instead.

Like I say, I’m an idiot. Still got back for tea before my parents, though.