'This Is Our Planet': Glorious Time-Lapse View of the Earth From Space

The Atlantic Home

Saturday, June 30, 2012

By Rebecca J. Rosen

Jun 29 2012, 10:50 AM ET 6 Vimeo user Tomislav Safundžić knitted NASA footage into this beautiful time-lapse video of Earth -- its continents, seas, the lights of cities -- and the surrounding sky and stars as they appear from the International Space Station. As astronaut Ron Garan wrote here on The Atlantic last December, seeing our planet like that imparts the realization "that we are all riding through the universe together on this spaceship we call Earth, that we are all interconnected, that we are all in this together, that we are all family." Take two minutes to enjoy the video below (full-screen recommended), and get a glimpse of the world from that "orbital perspective" -- both literally and figuratively.