Clouds curl over a coastline, deserts change colour and the thin blue line of the atmosphere curves into black. In 2016 NASA astronaut Jeff Williams filmed Earth in ultra-high definition from the International Space Station, and in December that year NASA released the footage, with Williams talking about what the view means to him.

Earth’s curved horizon, clouds and coastline seen from the International Space Station
Earth’s horizon, clouds and coastline from the ISS. Image: NASA.

Jeff Williams: four flights and 534 days in space

Jeffrey N. Williams was born in 1958 in Superior, Wisconsin, graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1980 and became an Army test pilot before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 1996. He flew four times:

  • STS-101 (2000): a Space Shuttle supply flight to the young space station, with a spacewalk.
  • Expedition 13 (2006): a long stay during which he took more photographs of Earth than any astronaut before him.
  • Expeditions 21 and 22 (2009–2010): 167 days on board, commanding Expedition 22.
  • Expeditions 47 and 48 (2016): launched on Soyuz TMA-20M, commanded Expedition 48 and landed on 6 September 2016.

By the end of his last mission he had spent 534 days in space, then the American record, beating Scott Kelly's 520 days until Peggy Whitson passed him in April 2017. He also made five spacewalks totalling almost 32 hours, and wrote a book of his Earth photographs, The Work of His Hands: A View of God's Creation from Space.

Watch Earth in ultra HD from the ISS

The film was shot during Williams's 2016 mission and published by NASA, which also made the full video files free to download in its public Space Program video collection. Between sequences of oceans, clouds and city lights, Williams explains why he thinks sharing this perspective matters.

Watch it twice. The first time, just enjoy the colour and movement. The second time, follow one thing: a coastline, a river delta, a storm system or the line between day and night.

How the space station sees Earth

The ISS orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth, circling the planet roughly every hour and a half, so the crew sees many sunrises and sunsets every day. The best seat is the Cupola, a seven-window observation module built by the European Space Agency and installed in February 2010. Its central window is 80 centimetres across, and astronauts use it both to operate the Canadarm2 robotic arm and to photograph the planet.

The station has been continuously occupied since November 2000, and more than 280 people from 26 countries have visited it. Much of what we know about how Earth looks from orbit comes from their cameras.

The overview effect

Many astronauts describe a lasting change of outlook after seeing the whole planet at once. The writer Frank White named it the overview effect in the 1980s: a mix of awe, strong emotion and a sense of connection with other people and with Earth itself. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, returning from the Moon in 1971, described an "explosion of awareness" and an "overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness".

Williams's film offers a small, at-home taste of that view. For more ways to see the world from above, try our AirPano cityscape feature, and for a sense of cosmic scale, our guide to the scale of space.

Sources