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Columbia Sunset


Prince of Calcutta
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The photograph attached was taken by the crew on board the

Columbia during

its last mission.

This photograph was taken via satellite, 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 London, Lisbon, and Madrid.

The sun is still shining on the Straight 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 Note that, the Sahara

is huge

and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the

left, on

top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

A really Fantastic photograph!

MAY THEIR SOULS REST IN PEACE.

post-1-1047306561_thumb.jpg

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Its a computerised composite from several different sources with different sensors..........

Its easy to forget just how brave USA astronauts are, when they still go into space knowing that their lives are dependant on such old technology (late 1970,s -80,s)

I remember a year or two ago NASA put out a request for some electronic parts that had been out of production for almost 20 years, in-order to replace some components....critical to some control subsystems on the shuttle....

They could not use a modern replacement as they would not be 100% sure how those parts would interact with the others in such an extreme enviroment.............

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