Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. Photography
  4. News

Can you spot Mount Everest in this dreamy photo taken from 250 miles up?

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Aerial photographers must surely wish they had the chance to stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), with the orbiting outpost offering ever-changing views of Earth from 250 miles up.

It’s therefore little surprise that the space station’s seven-window Cupola module, with its stunning panoramic views of Earth and beyond, is easily the most popular spot on the facility among astronauts lucky enough to visit.

Recommended Videos

While some simply gaze out of the Cupola to marvel at the scenery below, others grab a camera to capture the best of what they see before sharing it with the rest of us down here on terra firma.

Current ISS inhabitant Mark Vande Hei, who arrived at the facility in April 2021, likes to share the occasional image snapped from up high, with his latest effort looking more like something Van Gogh might have painted than a photograph.

The incredible shot was taken over the Himalayas, with NASA’s Vande Hei challenging folks to spot Mount Everest (answer at the end of this article), the world’s highest mountain at 29,032 feet (8,849 meters).

My New Year’s resolution is to get outside as much as possible. Well, after I land that is. Can you find Mt. Everest in this photo? pic.twitter.com/4CKQ2agYi3

— Mark T. Vande Hei (@Astro_Sabot) January 4, 2022

Here’s a better look at the image …

The Himalayas photographed from the ISS.
Mark Vande Hei/NASA

One of the keenest photographers to visit the space station in recent times was French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. In a post toward the end of his most recent stay that finished in November, Pesquet revealed how a great deal of planning is needed in order to have the best chance of capturing striking images from the ISS.

That’s because astronauts there spend most of their time working on science experiments rather than looking out of the window. Plus, with the station orbiting Earth 16 times a day, glimpses of interesting spots are only ever fleeting. That prompted Pesquet to plan ahead using NASA’s special navigation software that shows ISS times for night and day, cloud cover predictions, and, most importantly, the precise route of approaching orbits.

If the routes correspond with places of interest that Pesquet noted down prior to his mission, he can work out the precise time he needs to be in the Cupola to grab the shot.

As for Vande Hei’s fine effort, were you able to spot Everest? Twitter’s Project Inkfish appears to have nailed it …

And here’s the same view via Google Maps …
Mount Everest on Google Maps.

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics
Starship is finally going orbital, and SpaceX has picked September 22
Flight 14 is aiming for orbit, Starlink V3 deployment and a very long day in space.
Starship rocket.

SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.

Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver

Read more
Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water
A billion tons still comes up short
Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.

Read more
NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot
NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies
NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Read more