Today's blog is all about SPACE!

Seeing our planet from space must be an utterly bizarre experience because one would witness how small and insignificant we actually are. I have 3 things to direct your attention to. Firstly, is Don Petit’s long-exposure composite shots from 240 miles above the Earth. These photos are remarkably colourful and the star trails are mesmerising.

“My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes” Petit told NASA. “However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”

Secondly, I have here one single 121-megapixel photo. The colours differ from NASA's photos of Earth and this is achieved by combining visible and infrared wavelengths of light. Infrared light is used to see plants, hence the reason for the areas of the Earth that are usually expected to be green are shown as orange. 

The below video is comprised of around 350 shots, with one taken every 30 minutes, and 0.62 miles fitting into each pixel:

Thirdly, here's a timelapse video depicting the stars from low earth orbit, as viewed from the International Space Station (make sure you watch it in HD:

The film recommendation for today is Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'. This film is mysterious, existentialist, and visually superb. If you haven't seen it, you haven't lived.

Here's the opening!: