June 7, 2019
Venus at Sunrise From the Space Station
From the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Christina Koch (@AstroChristina) snapped and posted this image of the planet Venus at sunrise. The blue glow of Earth’s atmosphere shimmers as the station orbits our planet.
Image Credit: NASA
Last Updated: June 7, 2019
Editor: Yvette Smith
Cool!
Thankyou.
I was born 4 years before Yuri Gagarin went to space. I grew up watching the great space race.
Seeing this photo brings back the wonder….
I have to say that I’m more impressed by the image of earth’s atmosphere against the curvature of the planet. It made me think “Wow! and an element which consists of .04% of that is causing the world to slowly heat up!”…Yeah right!
And hard to believe 0.04% arsenic would do one in…
One is a living animal, one is a chemical system….D’OH !
Cyanide is deadly — but arsenic is forever.
0.04% of how much? And over what period of time? – and yes, Mark Broderick is quite right!
Trafamadore: thinking further about your comment re. 0.04% of arsenic, I think that you might not be sure of or aware as to how CO2 concentrations are measured and defined.
If so, here are the essential details.
What’s generally referred to as the concentration of CO2 in the air is actually the mole fraction of CO2, defined as the number of carbon dioxide molecules in a million molecules of dry air gases – for example, 410 parts per million of CO2 (abbreviated as ppm) means that in every million molecules of dry air there are 410 CO2 molecules, or 0.041%.
Why are air samples dried before CO2 measurement? It’s because the concentration of CO2 can alter depending on variables such as atmospheric pressure and temperature, and on how much water vapour (from almost none to 4% by volume) is present. Unlike concentration, the mole fraction is not affected by these variables – thus, by using dry air measurements, true comparisons of the amounts of CO2 over time can be made.
Actually arsenic is used to rid humans of tape worms.
Trafamadore – The human body is made up of about 10,000 chemicals most of which are active, whereas the atmosphere is made up of about 5 of which 2 are slightly active, Oxygen and Water. One in ten thousand is 0.0001% on average so yes 0.04% will do some damage.
People should stop copying and pasting from activist websites who use useless analogies which of course shows how ignorant you truly are.
Steve,
Not to be pendant (some say my natural state), but 1 part in 10000 is 0.0001 or 0.01%. You forgot to move the decimal point when making it a percentage.
oops you are correct? but at least the point remains the same.
280ppm CO2 casts an IR shadow, 415ppm casts a darker one, not really that difficult.
Prove it, nobody else has yet. Remember those pesky dinosaurs? When CO2 concentrations were over 1000ppm. Really bad for the planet aye.
I generally point out that 400 ppm of CO overnight may make that be your last night alive.
An amazing number of people think I’m still talking about CO2….
Or I point out the first 100 ppm of CO2 had much more impact than the last 100 ppm, but people who have convinced themselves that trace gases are unimportant just don’t get it.
I’m still hopeful I can come up with an explanation that will reach them, but so far haven’t found it.
“400 ppm of CO overnight may make that be your last night alive” where the 400 ppm are of minor interest here accounting CO collects on the ground causing caisson disease – decompression sickness.
[?? mod]
“400 ppm of CO overnight may make that be your last night alive” where the 400 ppm are of minor interest here accounting CO
due to it’s weight
collects on the ground causing caisson disease – decompression sickness.
The scary hing is how small the atmosphere actually is. If you take the maximum height of the troposphere, approx 12 miles, and lay that distance down flat on a map of the area you live, you realize that things only 12 miles away are very close. But that’s all the troposphere there is.
Sagan said the troposphere is about the same scale as the coat of varnish on a schoolroom globe. That made me environmentally aware and started my journey to where I stand as a skeptic of the CO2 control knob of climate change.
I think it was Sagan who pointed out that despite all the mountains and deep-sea trenches the Earth has a very much flatter surface than an orange.
When you look at the vapour trails left by aircraft overhead, they’re flying at around 35,000 feet – just over six and a half miles, and the temperature up there is about -40 to -50C.
Dangerous man-made global warming? Yeah, right….
Humans can’t affect the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, because it’s so thin — in your opinion?
What?
Straight-line distance from my house to work, 13 miles. I’d almost be in outer space!
It’s even more scary when you realize that our lives are dependent on essentially a thin film of chlorophyll.
Think about that the next time you mow the lawn!
Very beautiful.
It certainly provides that, anyone who could look at such an image and still proclaim the Earth is Flat, either doesn’t believe their eyes, or doesn’t understand the difference between Flat and curved.
“It certainly provides that, anyone who could look at such an image and still proclaim the Earth is Flat, either doesn’t believe their eyes, or doesn’t understand the difference between Flat and curved.”
No, they just think it’s faked.
AKA don’t believe their eyes
That picture is obviously taken from underneath the disk.
Fantastic photo – out of this world.
They forgot to fake the rest of the starz
Venus is the fourth or fifth brightest object in the sky (after Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and in this case Earth) so stars in the field of view are impossible to see – and probably the glare of sunrise in the Earth’s atmosphere has been reduced in the photograph as well, further reducing visibility of stars.
Here’s a bit of trivia: who was the first person to report on the blue glow?
Yuri Gagarin?
Hey – looking at it again – come to think : should we not glimpse lights from our cities??
Or is the photo perhaps taken over the Pacific Ocean?
The exposure time (not available at that NASA site) was probably too short to register the light from stars or streetlights. It did get some clouds. Given that Venus is bigger than a point and lit by bright sunlight (it’s closer to the Sun), it wouldn’t take a long exposure to record it. It may have been a handheld exposure.
Heck, I’ve seen Venus during the day both times I went looking for it.
A CO sink collects 1 million CO ppm.
That’s the reason one should never operate a diesel powered fork lifter or similar equipment in a closed hall.
Related ppm CO :
https://www.google.com/search?q=Italian+workers+died+abandoned+gas+station+coal+monoxide&oq=Italian+workers+died+abandoned+gas+station+coal+monoxide+&aqs=chrome.