Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the Earth | Hacker News Reader

Space station astronaut captures breathtaking view of the edge of the Earth

cnet.com

132 pointsfspacef51 comments

The full photo stream is amazing. I recommend checking it out: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thom_astro/page1

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/95db6bfcfed8401f.png

Look what I've found going through the pictures... Well protected Raspberry Pi in space. :)

I wonder if the USB thingy is a detector of some sort. It seems must have some reason, to stick out of the armor like that.

I think it is a humidity sensor. From astro-pi.org: "Young people write a simple program to take a humidity reading onboard the International Space Station and communicate it to the astronauts with a personalised message, which will be displayed for 30 seconds!" https://astro-pi.org/mission-zero/

Looks like it's the AstroPi program: https://www.esa.int/Education/AstroPI

I love how hodgepodge that looks. In most scifi, the space ships are all neat, tidy and super clean. Everything has a place. This looks like a hacker's workbench prototyping something, got it to work, shoved it in a case, and then runs the cat6 cable across the desk to get it running. Then just stuck to something to get it out of the way from the work space.

Edit: realized i replied to the wrong comment. go up one level

> neat, tidy and super clean.

Not so much since Alien.

well sure, once you have a xenomorph running loose, tidyness goes right out the window, or airlock as it were.

Right. :) Now I wonder how do they make people float in space inside a ship in sci-fi movies. Must be some real trickery, ...

Okay, now I want one of those. Not sure what I’d use it for, but hey, it’s a Raspberry. You always find an application for it.

That looks like https://astro-pi.org/

>> Expedition 66 is also notable because it will include two Russian civilians, film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, who will launch on a Soyuz rocket on Oct. 5 to film scenes for a movie called The Challenge.

Space tourism or a genuine a commercial venture in space? With today's film budgets, perhaps the next Marvel movie will involve such a trip.

Kind of gimmicky though, no? And I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Just that CGI/practical effects would almost certainly achieve the same end result and be a couple orders of magnitude cheaper (or five OOM...).

The world just watched three billionaires make fools of themselves to establish space tourism and I'm sure Russia noticed. This is the director's second launch this year and I can't see the Russian film industry being able to recoup that kind of investment. He must have received approval from the highest ranks in Russia, if it wasn't their idea/bankroll to begin with. Innovative propagandists even if it does seem gimmicky.

>The world just watched three billionaires make fools of themselves to establish space tourism

At most two, surely - Branson and Bezos were rushing to get themselves (in their own untested launch systems) up to the Karman line and drop back down again. Although arguably only Bezos made a fool of himself by acting butt-hurt about flying after Branson.

By contrast, Musk is launching paying customers into orbit on a proven rocket system that launches NASA astronauts to the ISS, same as Soyuz. If somebody's willing to pay for the launch and risk their lives, why wouldn't you let them?

>and I'm sure Russia noticed

Space tourism is hardly anything new for Russia - as far as I know, all space tourists who've flown to orbit so far have done so on Soyuz.

I'm more upset that Roscosmos, in their rush to fly the film set to the ISS, endangered the station.

Hasn't Tom Cruise been in the news about doing this same thing? Only, once again, the Russians do it first.

Edit: clearly people dont believe me:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52556699

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/russia-racing-beat-tom...

Three? You mean two? Branson and Bezos.

They want the real deal -- CGI can't handle the nuances of astronaut bloat face, clearly.

Kind of sideways, but I’m tired of CGI these days, no matter how real it feels, you “somehow” know it’s not real. That’s why I like Mad Max Fury Road better than Dr. Strange.

Neither. It's suspected it's a government funded propaganda movie and that was one of the reasons the launch of the Nauka module was so rushed, they needed it for the movie production.

I believe this is intended to beat America to the punch on a "movie filmed in space".

Tom Cruise has been planning his own movie filmed in space for a couple years and the Russians like to win space races when they can.

Also now they have the "first" one. That sells. Tom Cruise will be relegated to "second movie shot in space".

I thought that taking pictures in space will not show the stars in the background [0]. Is the light emitted from Earth not brighter than the stars?

[0] https://www.discovery.com/science/apollo-50th-anniversary/wh...

This seems to be taken when the earth was in darkness. The lights are city lights.

The subjects in that photo are significantly brighter than the small quantity of earth lights that can be seen in this photo, and so the photo on the moon would have used a much smaller aperture, for much less time.

Further, this photo was taken with the intent of capturing those stars and gases, so the camera was deliberately allowed to capture more light with a longer exposure. As a result, while the stars and gases can be seen, most of the Earth lights that can be seen in this photo are blown out -- overexposed.

Oh man the flat Earth idiots are going to flock to this thread in droves over that title alone.

The photo also, really. I see a disk Earth. It even has a forcefield, to keep the water in!

If thevearth would not have been flat he would not have an edge, would it ? Relax, the title is a bit funny.

See a video with similar setup of a rocket launch constructed out of a timelapse photo sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJy1u-N3NY0

Rotated using the terrestrial definition of 'up': https://i.imgur.com/6mPGSEf.jpeg

For some reason, I've always preferred photos of the planet from space when they are not shot with the earth "down below." I really get a sense of the weightlessness, and the feeling of traveling through space, if the Earth is to the side or at the top of the photo.

Your rotation simply doesn't look as majestic to me. I guess it just feels like it was shot from an airplane, even though of course I know rationally it must be much higher.

Even MS Photos can rotate pictures.

Is that faint green line being mentioned the same green flash that one is supposed to see just after sunset (but which I have never managed to see?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5pg843QhHc

So you're saying there is an edge ? ;)

Earth sure looks pretty flat from space

Yup, no blurring(!)

yup. flat.

clearly, that's distortion from the wide angle lens. put that into PS, hit the distortion correction button and whatch it pull back out straight.

This is super cool! Thanks for posting!

Upvoting the post is sufficient. Comments should add value by creating discussion.

It is frkn' 2021 and I click the frkn' image to enlarge, only to get the same frkn' size but now modal.

Why?

https://www.ck12.org/book/ck-12-middle-school-math-concepts-...

> An edge is the place where two faces meet. Edges are straight; they cannot be curved.

> Cones, spheres, and cylinders do not have any edges because they do not have any flat sides.

Cones and cylinders don't have any flat sides?

No wonder US schools are so poorly rated. They get very basic stuff very wrong like this. 2+2=5 is probably in the previous chapter.

2.4 rounded is 2.

2.4 + 2.4 = 4.8, rounded is 5.

Therefore, 2 + 2 = 5.

I was taught this as a "mind teaser" in middle school once. It was supposed to be cute and fun, but just ended up confusing half the class.

2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of 2 and sufficiently small values of 5.

Talking about undefined behaviour.

Cute and fun, but also very real if you're a CPU: https://0.30000000000000004.com/

I wouldn't consider the brain teaser a result of FP error. But yes, something to consider anyway.

Webster's 1913:

2. Any sharp terminating border; a margin; a brink; extreme verge; as, the edge of a table, a precipice.

4. The border or part adjacent to the line of division; the beginning or early part; as, in the edge of evening. "On the edge of winter." Milton.

Either the literal sense 2 or figurative sense 4 works here. The special mathematical sense is nowhere given in that edition of Webster's. I suppose they expected one would consult Euclid if one wished to know its sense in that jargon.

Perhaps we should just change the title to say an edge of the Earth?

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