internationalspacestation

A Time-Lapse of Earth Created Using Photos Taken by Astronaut Alexander Gerst

Photographs captured from the International Space Station have gotten a lot of press in recent years, especially as social networking has helped to share them with a wider audience. Quite a few time-lapses have been made as well using those photos.

Usually those videos are created by video editors who combine all kinds of photos found on space agency websites. The video above is a bit different: it was created with photos captured by a single person: astronaut Alexander Gerst.

Remarkable Time-Lapse Created from 80GB of ISS Pictures is the Best ISS Edit We’ve Seen

If you're interested in using the many hundreds of thousands of photos taken from the ISS to create a time-lapse -- and people have done a pretty spectacular job in the past -- the bar has just been raised significantly.

The video above, put together by French photographer and filmmaker Guillaume JUIN, is bar none the best edit of ISS photographs and footage we have ever seen.

Video: Astronauts Trap GoPro in a Floating Water Bubble… for Science of Course

If this doesn't put a big fat smile on your face, we're not sure what will. As part of an experiment on 'the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity,' the astronauts of Expedition 40 managed to trap a GoPro inside a floating sphere of water.

The video above is a behind the scenes look at that experience, which is about 10% science and 90% astronauts/science nerds having the time of their lives... as it should be.

Chris Hadfield Explains How Zero Gravity Makes it Possible to Take Sharp, Hand-Held Long Exposures

Have you ever noticed how, in every photo of an astronaut using camera gear in the International Space Station, there's pretty much never a tripod or monopod or special mount in sight? They're always just handholding this massive camera with a 400mm lens attached.

So how, then, can they capture incredibly crisp photos of the Earth when they're flying above it at 4.8 miles per second? In the video above, iconic Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield shares the fascinating answer.

Astronaut Reid Wiseman Uses a Floating Sphere of Water as ‘The Ultimate Fisheye Lens’ on the ISS

If we asked you to name the ultimate fisheye lens, the comments would probably fill up with many gear suggestions. Some, like this rare Nikon 6mm lens that pops up for sale occasionally, would probably be named more than once, but there's one suggestion you probably wouldn't make: a floating sphere of water.

That, however, is ISS astronaut Reid Wiseman's entry for the Ultimate Fisheye Lens.

Chris Hadfield’s New Photo Book Documents Each Continent on Earth as Seen from the ISS

Chris Hadfield is one of the most loved and accomplished astronauts to ever travel around the Earth. But he's not just an astronaut, he’s also an international bestseller with his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth reaching number one across the globe.

Now, he’s back with a new book titled You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes, which takes readers on a photographic tour of our cities, countries and continents from a vantage point few of us will ever experience first hand.

ISS Astronaut Captures the Thousand-Mile Shadows Clouds Cast on Earth’s Surface

Hovering somwhere between 205 and 255 miles above Earth is the International Space Station, currently housing six intrepid explorers that are hurtling through space at roughly 4.8 miles per second.

And one of those individuals is Alexander Gerst, a geophysicist who spends a great deal of his time on the ISS holding a camera and putting it to use taking pictures of our planet.

ISS Astronaut Snaps 3-Second Exposure to Show How ‘Crazy’ the Atmosphere Really Is

It's one thing to visualize different layers of gasses in the Earth's atmosphere and see drawings and models in a book or online... it's another thing entirely to capture it on camera. But of course, that's one of the perks of being an astronaut on the International Space Station, you get to do a whole lot of things that are "another thing entirely."

The photograph above was taken by astronaut Reid Wiseman and uploaded to his Twitter feed early this morning. It's a 3-second exposure, and we know this because he captioned the photo "3 second shutter exposure at night shows how crazy our #atmosphere really is."

This is What a Meteor Shower Looks Like from Space

The 2014 Perseid meteor shower will peak this week, and astrophotographers the world over will be gazing up at the skies, cameras contending with a very bright moon in the hopes of capturing some bright streaks across the sky.

And while some of them will undoubtedly succeed in capturing some stunning shots, there's one view not a single one will be able to get... the view of a meteor shower from above.

‘Cities at Night’ as Captured by Astronauts Aboard the International Space Station

Since 2003 astronauts have been snapping up photographs of our beautiful planet from the International Space Station. All of these photographs have been archived together into a resource called The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. It’s through the utilization of this resource, as well as a database compiled by Spanish Astrophysicists that a little project called Cities at Night exists.

Astronauts on the ISS Document Hurricane Arthur from 230 Miles Above

As this July 4th weekend was just winding up and much of the USA was getting ready for a fun, family- and firework-filled time, much of the East Coast had to put those plans on hold as Hurricane Arthur bore down on their homes.

While all of this was happening, 230 miles straight up the International Space Station astronauts were documenting the storm as only they could, putting the power of mother nature in both beautiful and terrifying perspective.

NASA Releases Beautiful Photographs of Lightning Taken from the ISS

If it ever was a secret, it sure isn't anymore: we LOVE photos from space. And judging by the response we typically get to sharing them, so do you, which is why we were so excited when we stumbled across these magnificent images of lightning NASA released just a couple of days ago.

Striking ISS Photo Shows How Dark North Korea is Compared to Its Neighbors

A new photo released by NASA and taken from the International Space Station shows just how dark North Korea really is, and we don't mean figuratively. Taken on the night of January 30th as the ISS was passing over the Korean Peninsula, a nearly completely blacked-out North Korea jumps out at you, surrounded by its well-lit neighbors.

Astronauts Beam Down an Epic Christmas Eve Spacewalk Portrait

Well, if you're gonna put a portrait of your mug on Instagram for the whole world to see, this is the way to do it. Taken from outside the ISS during one of the two spacewalks required to replace a faulty water pump, this selfie-like portrait (it is NOT a selfie, contrary to just about every headline you'll read) was uploaded to NASA's Instagram account yesterday.

These Breathtaking ISS Time-Lapses Make You Feel Like You’re Flying Through Space

Once in a while, you wake up in the morning with problems on your mind (or in your Inbox) and immediately start your day in a funk, focused on those problems. It's these mornings that benefit most from some perspective-giving imagery, and perhaps nothing puts our tiny Earth-bound problems in perspective quite as decisively as photographs taken from the International Space Station.

The time-lapses you see above and below will do just that, and do it in spectacular fashion as you fly over the Earth feeling a bit like Superman trying to turn back time (oh, I'm sorry, is my Nerd showing?)

Exercise with a View: Check Out What ISS Astronauts See When They Bench Press

NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio just arrived on the ISS last week (with the Olympic torch in tow, no less), and even though he wasn't one of the astronauts who got to take the Olympic torch for a spacewalk/photo shoot, he wasted no time starting to upload photos from orbit.

All of the photos he's uploaded (gallery below) are awesome for one reason or another, but one in particular has gotten a bunch of attention. Uploaded yesterday, the photo above shows the view Mastracchio and his fellow astronauts have while exercising on the ISS.

This is What the Sky Would Look Like if the Moon Was at the Same Distance as the ISS

We've shown off some interesting videos/photo series in the past that highlight different fictional skylines. For instance, you can see what it would look like if each of our solar system's planets replaced the Moon, or if the Earth had rings like Saturn.

The video above shows another interesting scenario: this is what the sky would look like if the Moon was at the same distance from the Earth as the ISS.

Photographer Captures the ISS Looking Like the USS Enterprise

Dumitrana, Romania-based astrophotographer Maximilian Teodorescu recently got his hands on an 1800mm f/12 Maksutov telescope and decided to put it through its paces this past weekend. He decided to test out the imaging quality by using it to photograph the International Space Station passing in front of the moon in broad daylight. The beautiful photograph above is what he ended up capturing.

Photographing Earth from the Cupola on the International Space Station

NASA's Image of the Day today is a photograph showing one of the best photo op spots to be found on the International Space Station: the Cupola module. The image (shown above) shows astronaut and flight engineer Chris Cassidy pointing a Nikon DSLR and 400mm lens out one of the Cupola's windows to photograph some location on Earth 250 miles below him.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Explains How to Take Pictures of Earth from Space

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been serving as one of the International Space Station's resident photographers. Every day he posts beautiful photographs showing what our planet looks like from orbit to his Twitter account, @cmdr_hadfield.

Today the Canadian Space Agency released the video above, in which Hadfield takes the time to explain how to best photograph Earth's landscape from 400km (~250 miles) above the surface.

Neat Visualizations of the 1 Million+ Pics Shot from Space by NASA Astronauts

Since NASA's first mission to the International Space Station back in 2000, astronauts on board the artificial satellite have snapped over 1.1 million photographs. What's neat is that every one of those photographs is available to the general public through a giant online database.

Open source rocket scientist Nathan Bergey decided to use his coding skills to do a little digging through the image archive, and ended up creating some beautiful visualizations showing where the images were shot in relation to our planet.

Paying Tribute to Astronaut Don Pettit and His Amazing Photography from the ISS

Like many of us, astrophotographer Christoph Malin is a big fan of astronaut and fellow photographer Don Pettit. We've featured Pettit's photography several times before -- we even shared his entire talk from Luminance 2012 here -- but in the video above, Malin puts together a little bit of both into a fitting tribute to his favorite "astronaut, poet and astrophotographer."

Erupting Volcano As Seen From The ISS

Since we've been talking about taking pictures of outer space, it only seems right that we share an incredible picture taken from outer space. This photo, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, shows the incredible vantage point they were privy to in 2009 when they witnessed an eruption of the highly active Sarychev Volcano.

Photos of Astronauts Using DSLRs on the International Space Station

Earlier this month we shared some neat photos of astronauts using DSLRs while on spacewalks outside the International Space Station. In case you're also wondering how the cameras are used inside the habitable satellite, we've carefully perused NASA's 2Explore Flickr photo stream in search of those photos as well, and have collected them here in one place for your viewing pleasure. They've got some pretty nice gear up in the ISS... lucky astronauts.

Photographs of Astronauts Using DSLRs on Spacewalks

This photograph of Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide taking a self-portrait was published to NASA's amazing 2Explore Flickr account on Wednesday. It was snapped during a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The EXIF data embedded in the photo reveals that he was using a Nikon D2Xs with a 10.5mm fisheye lens at f/11, 1/500, and ISO 200.