Beautiful Earth

I saw this beautiful pic on FB page of Rare and Uncommon Photos. The details about the image here:

The photograph was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities’ lights.
The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland , Paris , and Barcelona,and that’s it’s still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon , and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar . The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness.
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands ; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point
of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands.

Day_and_Night from Space Shuttle Columbia on it's last mission. Photo Courtesy: Rare and Uncommon Photos FB page

Not sure if this is indeed taken by Columbia’s last flight but the photo sure aroused my curiosity and I searched for more authentic sources. Boy I was in for a treat! Posting a few of these wonderful pics I collected from various sources; all of them in turn credit their source to NASA.

Space shuttle Endeavour's open payload bay in a picture taken in December 1998

The NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette against a backdrop of the sun on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, as viewed from Florida, U.S. Image Courtesy: NASA/Denverpost.com

The video is called “All Alone in the night”. It is a time lapse footage of the Earth as seen from the ISS. This video on YouTube is uploaded by BitMeizer. Images from http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ and Music: ‘Freedom Fighters’ by Two Steps from Hell. One hell of a video.