Some of Picture From NASA

The Water Planet

Full Size
Viewed from space, the most striking feature of our planet is the water. In both liquid and frozen form, it covers 75% of the Earth’s surface. It fills the sky with clouds. Water is practically everywhere on Earth, from inside the planet's rocky crust to inside the cells of the human body.

This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on observations from MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, on NASA's Terra satellite. It is one of many images of our watery world featured in a new story examining water in all of its forms and functions.

The View from Up Top

Full Size
A low pressure system in the eastern North Pacific Ocean is featured in this image photographed on Mar. 20, 2011 by an Expedition 27 crew member in the Cupola of the International Space Station. Just under ten feet in diameter, the Cupola accommodates two crew members and portable workstations that can control station and robotic activities. The multi-directional view allows the crew to monitor spacewalks and docking operations, as well as provide a spectacular view of Earth and other celestial objects as evidenced in this image.

A Thin Blue Line

Full Size
A docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft (right) backdropped by the thin line of Earth's atmosphere and the blackness of space is featured in this image, which was taken by the STS-133 crew. The image also features a portion of the International Space Station's Quest airlock and solar array panels.

Hurricane Earl: The Astronaut View

Full Size
The relatively placid view from the International Space Station belied the potent forces at work in Hurricane Earl as it hovered northeast of Puerto Rico on Aug. 30, 2010. With maximum sustained winds of 135 miles (215 kilometers) per hour, the storm was classified as a category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale as it passed north of the Virgin Islands.

In this photograph captured with a digital SLR camera by NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock, Earl had a distinct eye that spanned about 17 miles (28 kilometers). Most of the storm had a seemingly uniform top, though the bottom edge of the image gives some sense of the towering thunderheads forming over the ocean. The solar panels of the ISS remind us that the sun is still shining, at least on ISS Expedition 24.

"Hurricane Earl is gathering some serious strength," Wheelock wrote from his perch on ISS. "It is incredible what a difference a day makes when you’re dealing with this force of nature. Please keep a watchful eye on this one...not sure if Earl will go quietly into the night like Danielle."

Nile River Delta at Night

Full Size
One of the fascinating aspects of viewing Earth at night is how well the lights show the distribution of people. In this view of Egypt, the population is shown to be almost completely concentrated along the Nile Valley, just a small percentage of the country’s land area.

The Nile River and its delta look like a brilliant, long-stemmed flower in this photograph of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea, as seen from the International Space Station. The Cairo metropolitan area forms a particularly bright base of the flower. The smaller cities and towns within the Nile Delta tend to be hard to see amidst the dense agricultural vegetation during the day. However, these settled areas and the connecting roads between them become clearly visible at night. Likewise, urbanized regions and infrastructure along the Nile River becomes apparent.

Scattered blue-grey clouds cover the Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, while much of northeastern Africa is cloud-free. The thin yellow-brown band tracing the Earth’s curvature at the top of the image is airglow, a faint band of light emission that results from the interaction of atmospheric atoms and molecules with solar radiation at an altitude of approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers).

This astronaut photograph was taken by the Expedition 25 crew on Oct. 28, 2010, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 16 mm lens.

Liftoff!

Full Size
The Soyuz TMA-21 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, April 5, 2011, carrying Expedition 27 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev, NASA Flight Engineer Ron Garan and Russian Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko to the International Space Station. The Soyuz, which has been dubbed "Gagarin", is launching one week shy of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Yuri Gagarin from the same launch pad in Baikonur on April 12, 1961 to become the first human to fly in space.

Sumber: nasa.gov