An Astronaut’s View of Earth. Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA's astronaut team describes the special places that spacemen focus on whenever they get a moment.
"We start with the coast of Namibia in southwestern Africa, the very dry desert coast of the Namib Desert. You can see a cloud band butting up against the shore and some straight sand dunes in the lower left of the picture. Yeah those are big red sand dunes that the astronauts say is one of the most beautiful sites that you can get when you're flying.
Coming into the view on the left is an impact crater right in the middle of the picture, right about now and some wind streaks. We know where this area is because it's a bit unique. We've got a major dune field coming into the picture on the left there: the Oriental Sand Sea, as it's called in French, and on the top is the Isawan Sand Sea.
This is the island of Sicily with cloud over Mt. Etna, so you can't quite tell there's a big volcano in the middle of the picture right now. And there's the toe of the boot of Italy coming into the picture from the left. See a good example of sun glint on the right with the sea reflecting the sun... |
