Gallery: Astronaut's Eye View: Time-Lapse Videos of Earth
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A NASA astronaut on the Space Shuttle Endeavor brought space back down to Earth. Astronaut [Don Pettit](http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/pettit.html) took over 85 time-lapsed videos of Earth from his stint on the International Space Station to highlight features of the changing planet. "There is phenomenology that happens on a timescale that you can't see in real time," he said. "It occurred to me that making time-lapse movies on the space station would bring out things that you normally don't observe." Pettit also wanted to capture what it feels like to be in space. "You feel like you're on a frontier," he says. "I like to define a frontier as a place where your intuition does not apply. It's a place where the answers are not in the back of the book. As a result, a frontier is a place that's rich in discovery." Space has been called a frontier before, of course -- "But it's not the final frontier." Frontiers can be anywhere, he says, from under the lens of a microscope to the bottom of the ocean. Space "will only be the final frontier when human beings stop looking at our world and wondering what's going on." Here are some of our favorite time-lapsed videos of Earth from space. __Above:__ Out of all his footage, Pettit says this video, encompassing a sunset, a moonrise and the northern lights, is one of his favorites. The camera took one image every 15 seconds, so this 38-second video captures about 9 and a half minutes of real time. Because the space station and its crew orbit Earth once every 90 minutes, they see 16 sunrises and sunsets every day. *Video: NASA/Don Pettit*
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Pettit flew on space shuttle mission [STS-126]( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts126/main/index.html), a 16-day trip to the International Space Station that launched in November 2008. Among other things, Pettit and his co-crew members brought up an advanced life support system that converts urine into drinkable water. Pettit got tips from scientists on the ground for when aurorae, the brilliant lights that dance on the Earth's upper atmosphere in response to solar winds and magnetic storms, would be visible from space, so he knew which nights to set up his camera. *Video: NASA/Don Pettit*
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The shoebox-sized satellite that the space station spits out in this video is called PicoSat. Its job is to investigate the effects the radiation environment in space on solar panels, and how their efficiency would degrade with time. "All we did was get the shuttle oriented in the right position, and push the button, and PicoSat just sprung out like a jack-in-a-box," Pettit said. *Video: NASA/Don Pettit*
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This video features one of the solar panels attached to the International Space Station. "When I played these videos back, I was surprised at how many things on the outside of the space station are jiggling and moving around," Pettit said. The sense of motion while actually on the space station is surprisingly slight, he added. "The solar panels seem stationary. Then you look out 5 minutes later and you can tell there's been some motion, but it's really hard to put your finger on it." *Video: NASA/Don Pettit*
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This video was taken out the window of the Space Shuttle Endeavor, after it had detached from the space station. The Earth appears to change the direction it rotates in as the space shuttle shifts its orientation with respect to the planet. *Video: NASA/Don Pettit*
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This calm, sedate video of Earth from the space station was released by NASA on Earth day, 2009. Exploring space can give Earth-bound humans a new appreciation of our home planet. But there's another, grimmer reason to explore space, Pettit says. Beyond the sheer beauty of seeing the Earth from orbit and the spiritual satisfaction of discovery, Pettit thinks space exploration is a matter of survival. "If the dinosaurs had explored space, if they'd colonized other planets, they would still be alive today," he said. "Ultimately exploring space is about survival of human beings as a species. We do not want to become like the dinosaurs." *Video: NASA*
