NASA Reveals The Public’s Favorite Photos Of Earth Taken By Astronauts
The winning photo: ‘Lake Van, Turkey’ by Kate Rubins, 2016. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
In the 2021 edition of its Tournament Earth contest, which pits astronaut-shot photographs against each other, NASA saw 32 images of the planet running head to head to determine the view that would enamor people the most. 930,000 votes and five rounds later, it was down to just one: a photo of Lake Van in Turkey, snapped by Kate Rubins aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in September 2016 (shown above).
Lake Van is the largest soda or alkaline lake on Earth, and is an endorheic water body, meaning that it has “no outlet,” NASA explained. This means its water only escapes through evaporation. The swirls caught in the image are turbidity plumes, light- and dark-toned water made up of “calcium carbonate, detrital materials, and some organic matter.”
NASA’s Earth Observatory described in another note that taking photos from the space station is especially tricky as the facility “moves so quickly.” Even if they were snapped using a digital camera, which is able to capture image “within 1/1000th of a second,” they could still turn out looking blurry or distorted.
See some of the crowd’s favorite Earth photos below, and view more here.
‘Stars in Motion’ by Jon Pettit, 2012. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Castellanus Cloud Tower’ by an unnamed photographer, 2016. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Stargazing from the ISS’ by an unnamed photographer, 2015. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Activity at Cleveland Volcano, Aleutian Islands’ by Jeff Williams, 2006. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Rolling Through the Appalachians’ by Christina Koch, 2019. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Cruising Past the Aurora Borealis’ by Randy “Komrade” Bresnik, 2017. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
‘Typhoon Maysak from the Space Station’ by Samantha Cristoforetti, 2015. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory
[via CNET, images courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center, via NASA Earth Observatory]
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