Greetings, Earthlings

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on July 7, 2003). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Just something cool: a weblog from space, written by NASA Science Officer Ed Lu from on board the International Space Station.

At night, the dominant thing you see when you look down is thunderstorms. Lightning lights up the clouds in sometimes spectacular displays. At any given time at night, especially over the tropics, you can see one or more lightning storms going on. The lightning flashes illuminate the clouds from within, and ripple through the storm systems. I enjoy turning off all the lights in the docking compartment, and watching thunderstorm systems at night through its sideward facing windows. The southern Indian Ocean is a great place to watch thunderstorms.

As we near Australia, if you look towards the horizon southward you can see the aurora. The aurora look like glowing green curtains which move upwards from the top of the atmosphere. The curtains intersect the atmosphere in a curved line, which appears as a bright green line south of Australia. There are times when we actually fly through the aurora, and you can look downwards and see the green glow below you. Sometimes there are traces of red along with the predominant green. We’ve taken some time-lapse movies looking towards the horizon as we fly past the aurora.

(via Craig Suchland)