Have a look at these photos taken from the International Space Station over the past few years. There's mountains, southern lights, tropical storms and spaceships. Do I need to sell it any more? All photos in this set were taken by astronauts aboard the ISS through the Crew Earth Observations program, aiming to serve as a record of our change and development on Earth. Everyone told you not to look down on yourself - but trust me, it's really quite interesting.
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There's A Storm Brewing
This is Hurricane Katia, which formed in August this year, peaking as a Category Four hurricane and affecting parts of the US and Europe. Its fastest wind speed was 215 km/h. In this photo you can also see some shaping of a hurricane's characteristic spiral arms, technically called "spiral banding" or "rain banding" when not referring to hurricanes.
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Dark Side Of The Moon
A last quarter crescent moon shot as the ISS passed over Central Asia. You can also see the thin blue line that is the Earth’s atmosphere in this photograph.
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Under Southern Skies
This is the aurora australis, (also known as the Southern Lights) which has much in common with its northern counterpart, aurora borealis. Both occur when highly charged electrons from the Sun's solar wind move along the lines of magnetic force coming from the Earth's core and centred around the north and south poles. As the electrons strike oxygen and nitrogen atoms energy is released in the form of red and green (oxygen) and blue and purple (nitrogen) light.
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Italian Illumination
Pretty spectacular overhead image of Milan, Italy, at night. Milan is the nation’s second largest city with a population of approximately 1.3 million people. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics it has a population density of 7340 people per square kilometre. All up, that's a lot of lightbulbs running, allowing the ISS astronauts to capture this pretty picture.
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Micro Mountain
This is Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa at 5,895 metres. It’s also a dormant volcano - but the last major eruption was 360,000 years ago. If it did erupt, the pictures the ISS would be able to take would definitely be interesting - perhaps even the ionisation of dust and ash coming into the atmosphere.
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Brightest At The Borderlands
This image is of the India-Pakistan border, which can be seen as the brightest, darker yellow line which snakes horizontally across the picture. Below that line is Pakistan, and above it is India. The concentrations of light dotted across the Earth are particular capital cities including Lahore, Islamabad and New Delhi.
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Terribly Chile
Wow. No doubt the worst pun made about this photograph ever. But it certainly would be cold on the Southern Patagonian Ice Field which is located in both Chile and Argentina. It has an area of almost 17,000 kilometres squared and there are actually two volcanoes under all that ice. It’s interesting to think about what changes we might see to this ice field if a similar photograph were taken in 50 years time. Drastic changes, or none at all?
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But That's The ISS!
Confusing, right? Considering all of these pictures were taken by crew inside the ISS, how is it taking photographs of itself? Before Kaysing-style conspiracies begin to arise, you should know that this picture was taken by the shuttle Discovery on its 39th and last voyage after the two spacecraft had undocked.