Comments

  1. jstackpo says

    Any idea where that might be? Florida perhaps with thunderstorms over the Gulf Stream at the right center? And a single big one over the land in the center?

  2. says

    Those Russian Soyuz-based designs always look rather organic to me, a little like insects. The colour of that picture also adds to the SF atmosphere.

  3. Menyambal says

    I tried to figure it out, was guessing Japan. Googled up a person who said ‘e finally figured out Malaysia, and I agree after checking. Looking mostly south, the bright city in lower center is Kelantan.

    I was guessing those were blue-lit fishing boats in the foreground, but off in the distance are either some very bright yellow-light boats, or my estimation is all off. Maybe oil rigs?

  5. says

    According to this site, it’s the Mediterranean:

    The Strait of Gibraltar, the Nile river, southern Italy and a powerful thunderstorm, seen from more than 400km (250 miles) above, were all captured on film by members of the Expedition 49 crew as the space station passed over Earth in low orbit.

  6. Menyambal says

    NelC, the site I saw had 4 photos, 3 of them recognizably the Strait, Italy, and the Nile. The fourth was of a thunderstorm, but it wasn’t labeled as the Med. That was all copied off NASA’s Facebook page, which I can’t access.

    I can’t really get Google Earth to work well on this tablet, nor can I compare a ‘net image to it. I’m not totally sure that’s Malaysia, as the strait on the other side looks much too narrow, but it happens I know how weird things look from altitude, from the other side of that very strait, if it is the Malacca.

  7. zetopan says

    “According to this site, it’s the Mediterranean:”

    That site is RT (formerly Russia Today) and it is a Russian propaganda site. Some skepticism should be standard operating procedure when you read anything at that site.

  9. Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD says

    Orbiting is a slightly better word than ‘flying’ for things that aren’t actually going through air.

  10. wzrd1 says

    The Soyuz spacecraft are unbelievably hardy craft as well. Hardy enough to survive a failure of the service module to separate and the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere top downward, rather than heatshield down, until the service module finally tore free. Then, the craft reoriented heatshield down.
    I doubt our old Apollo craft could have survived such an entry.

  12. =8)-DX says

    I think for it to be the future you have to have megastructures visibly protruding from both the cloudscape and the horizon.

  14. Maya says

    Using the EXIF Date and Time (original) from the NASA flicker album (2016-09-18 14:30:10 for those playing along at home), and using the picture of Italy (iss049e004708) to determine that the camera is set to GMT, and then plugging both of those value those values into here: http://www.isstracker.com/historical gives an answer of Malaysia.

  15. blf says

    In could be the Mediterranean — there was a whopping great thunderstorm here much of the night a few nights ago.

  16. blf says

    If the photo is dated 18-Sept and/or c.14h30 UTC, (Maya@14) then it clearly is not the me@15 storm of a few Oct nights ago.

  17. Rich Woods says

    the most SF cover image I’ve seen yet

    It looks like they got the low-orbit ion cannon working.

  18. Menyambal says

    Okay, I’ve spent ‘way more time on this than I could have. I learned how to flip between Google Earth and Google Chrome on this tablet, and how to use both a little better.

    I agreed with the guy that I Googled up that it was Malaysia, and the one town was Kelantan. What I had trouble with was Sumatra on the other side of the Malacca Strait. Until I figured that out, I was being tentative.

    It turns out the view is of a place where the strait is narrow, and also the perspective is flattening. I’m picking out towns on Sumatra, so I’m no longer being tentative.

    The view is of Malaysia, looking south over Kuala Lumpur, which is beneath the clouds.

  21. DonDueed says

    If you like this, you might want to check out The Overview Effect, available on Amazon Video and (presumably) elsewhere. It’s about an hour of video taken from the ISS, time-compressed. It’s much like this photo, but in motion. Fantastic views of the planet, cities, storms, lightning galore, from a variety of angles and varying lighting conditions. Some scenes show the station’s hardware, such as solar panels tracking the sun as the station orbits. Pretty nice.