NASA Releases Beautiful ‘Gravity’-Inspired Photo Set Ahead of Oscar Night

Spoiler Alert: The first paragraph of this article gives away a major part of the movie ‘Gravity.’ Skip past it if you haven’t seen the movie yet.


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“You should see the sun shining on the Ganges. It’s amazing…” says George Clooney in the movie ‘Gravity,’ as his character floats through the cold vastness of space, cool as only a very George Clooney-ish character can be when facing insurmountable odds and indescribable beauty all at the same time.

But while Sandra Bullock’s character had more important things to worry about just that second, chances are anyone reading this doesn’t. And so, ahead of the Oscars where ‘Gravity’ is bound to take home at least a few of the golden statuettes, NASA has released a beautiful photo series to remind us what the view really looks like from space.

There’s no image of the sun shining over the Ganges (we checked, all bated breath and sweaty palms, but alas, no dice) but there are plenty of incredible views that might just take your breath away.

The night photos are my personal favorites, but space walks, massive hurricanes, pictures of the Hubble telescope and some shots from the era of the Space Shuttle all have their place in this beautiful photo set titled ‘Gravity’ — NASA’s Real Life Photos from Space:

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If NASA’s goal here was to get you excited about the Oscars, they probably failed… because all I’m experiencing is a yearning to see these views for myself. But if I had to guess, that’s the reaction they hoped I would have anyway.

Check out all of the images above in beautiful high-resolution, along with descriptive captions that tell you exactly what you’re looking at, over on the NASA Goddard Flickr stream. You can also view them as a slideshow here.


Image credits: Photographs courtesy of NASA

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