One astronaut's interstellar view
Chris Hadfield shares his favorite photos of Earth captured aboard the International Space Station in "You are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes." He joined "CBS This Morning" to talk about his photos.
In this photo, Detroit River separates Michigan and Canada, with Detroit on the right and Windsor, Ontario, on the left -- two countries, one river.
Ouadane, Mauritania
The Richat Structure in Mauritania, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is a landmark for astronauts. If you’ve been busy doing experiments and haven’t looked out the window for a while, it’s hard to know where you are, especially if you’re over a vast 3,600,000-square-mile desert. This bull’s-eye orients you, instantly. Oddly, it appears not to be the scar of a meteorite but a deeply eroded dome, with a rainbow-inspired color scheme.
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Salt from evaporation ponds in Great Salt Lake, Utah, is used to produce a lot of the world’s magnesium metal. The largest saline lake in the western hemisphere attracts pastel-colored algae, brine shrimp and the birds that love them, but so far, just this one lone wolf.
Havana to Washington, D.C.
On a clear day you can see forever -- or at least from Havana to the United States capital.
Himalayas
Tibet Autonomous Region, China
Arica, Chile
A twist of cloud near Arica, Chile. You see these frequently in this part of the world because the Pacific is cold, the land is warm, and the currents and winds combine to form a cloudy vortex—clockwis
Perereira Barreto, Brazil
The area around Perereira Barreto in Brazil, about 400 miles north of São Paolo, was originally settled in the 1920s by Japanese immigrants who worked on coffee and sugar planation along the Rio Tietê. But in the 1990s, the river was dammed to create a hydroelectric power plant, flooding and permanently submerging many farms and even a suspension bridge across the Tietê. Today there’s a new bridge, and from this angle, the body of water looks like a millipede.
Venice floating
Venice, Italy
Manhattan, New York
This composite shows Manhattan awake at 9:23 a.m. local time and at rest at 3:45 a.m.
San Francisco, California
Much of the densely built-up waterfront around San Francisco sits on landfill, often a blend of rubble and sediment dragged up from the bay. In a major earthquake, landfill is more prone to liquefaction than bedrock: it behaves like a liquid, shaking far more severely, and is more likely to give way altogether.
Nile River
The Nile drains out into the Mediterranean. The bright lights of Cairo announce the opening of the north-flowing river’s delta, with Jerusalem’s answering high beams to the northeast. This 4,258-mile braid of human life, first navigated end-to-end in 2004, is visible in a single glance from space.
See more of astronaut Chris Hadfield's photos here.