APOD: The ISS from Above (2010 Mar 03)

[cmfeldsberg]

South part of California, Low California ( mexico ) ?

[enichola]

I believe the photo was taken over Finland, and the water visible in the shot is the Gulf of Bothnia.

[podkayn]

I really think I see much of southern Africa behind the upper left bank of solar panels. The curve inward where South America once was joined is distinctive. The bottom of the picture is the icy coast of Antartica- I see at least one large ice floe that broke loose from an ice sheet? Of course, it could be a cloud. . . .

[Wenz]

Maranhao southeast of Sao Louis
Brasilia
Coastline

[orourkeg]

It's the west coast of North America. Vancouver is just to the left of the upper-most solar panel.

[Wenz]

coastline southeast Sao Louis Maranhao Brasilia

[bazillion]

I think that someone Photoshopped the image and what we're actually looking at is Io.

[jsperr]

I think I see a feature that reminds me of the Nile River Delta.

So I will guess the Alexandria, Egypt -- Benghazi, Libya coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

[bobmon]

Quiz: Can anyone identify the landscape behind the space station?

I'm pretty sure it's the planet Earth.

[macbethany]

Clearly this is Middle Earth. And if you squint just the right way, you can even see the towers of Hogwarts in the top left corner.

[mlz]

I think it is Chukot, Russia and the Bering Sea.

[edwintum]

Gibraltar.

[evangelion]

mmmm... alaska?

[beta700a]

My guess this is a southern part of Atlantic Ocean, in the direction of Africas's southern end. Too much clouds on this picture

[Donald Pelletier]

I believe it's the Sierra Leone and LIbéria coast.

[tedcopy]

All is white so Ross ice shelf sounds good.

[me2.0]

Let us pick apart the picture. The little green dots near top center and the larger smeared dots in bottom left corner are clearly remants of taking the picture through a material like glass. But what of the pinkish and bluish smears? ISS orbits at a height between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi).
Aurorae typically occur in the ionosphere stretching from a height of about 80 km to more than 1000 km above the surface. So it could be aurorae. If the pinkish smears are aurorae occuing between ISS and Earth then ISS would be in the polar regions. So I would vote Antartica or polar ice cap or maybe near canada eh?

[RJN]

Good idea, me2.0! Someone(s) might also look carefully through online NASA images and videos taken near the time of this one for clues. It seems this image was taken on Flight Day 13 of shuttle mission STS-130. The image can be found on this page: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/ima ... page6.html . I think Youtube also has some videos taken during Flight Day 13 or STS-130 as well.

[cindy116]

Looks like the bulge on the west coast of Africa to me. Will an answer be posted by tomorrow?

[Chris Peterson]

All is white so Ross ice shelf sounds good.

It is possible to place some constraints on the question. The ISS has an orbital inclination of 52°. That means that nothing seen below it will be at a higher latitude than ±52°. At its orbital height the horizons are about 1900 km away, but with the tangent effect, we don't typically see much detail outside a few hundred kilometers from the ISS's ground position. That pretty much rules out arctic or near-arctic views, including Greenland or Antarctica.

[RJN]

Cindy: no, the answer will not be posted by tomorrow, at least not by me. I am sorry if I gave that impression. Although I wrote this APOD, I do not myself know the answer. I thought this would be not very difficult and fun for people to figure out. And it would be another way to test the boundaries of the "collective intelligence" of APOD readers. With all the clouds, however, it turned out to be harder than I thought. Most likely, though, the shuttle astronaut who took the image knows the answer, so the information likely exists.

[geckzilla]

Look at that smart little bot automatically abbreviating ISS so that it fits in the topic title. Those few lines of code finally get some use.

[DonAVP]

I can't recognize the landscape- looks like mainly ocean with a land mass along the upper border of the picture. However, NASA let us know this:

Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 7:54 p.m. (EST) on Feb. 19, 2010.

So this picture was probably taken within an hour of that time. Is there an orbital tracker for the ISS that allows you to go back and see the ground track for a given date and time?

Without some constraints on the possibilities, this is almost like a Rorschach test.

I used Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/to locate ISS on your date and time. The station was in between the Antarctic and Australia headed toward Australia. If you add an hour it would be over the Atlantic ocean between South America and Africa but it would have been the middle of night. Since this picture was taken while on the sun side it would have been over the Pacific Ocean. The terminator was just off the North American Pacific coast with ISS flying over Vancouver at 18:33 pm (6:33 PST). Because the Earth is covered mostly by water it is a good guess that most as well as this image is over water and the Pacific Ocean is the biggest body of water.

Don

[goat]

I think it's Hudson Bay, seen upside down, in winter with a lot of snow and ice. The upper penisula of Quebec is at the upper left.

[DonAVP]

On a different line of thought. How long will it be before there are regular trips to the ISS by the public? By this I mean people going up for a weekend or so. I know there is a market out there as well as some with enough money to pay for it. Your thoughts.

With the government is getting out of the space business next year. I am referring to the closing down of the shuttle and most of the activity that NASA does. These future trips will need to be done from the private sector. IMO the government should have gotten out years ago and let those on the private side step up to the plate. Wouldn't you love to look out that new six window atrium they just installed?

Don