Astronaut Shane Kimbrough apparently knows his Front Range geography. He snapped the image above from more than 200 miles high in orbit, capturing Colorado's greater metro area, and tweeted it this morning. (Well, morning for us, who knows what time for him. Space time.)
Scroll on for more.
This one above is my personal favorite because, like the Blue Dot image, it captures most of our little lives in one image. I also like that it's blurred and distorted in some parts, giving the impression that it really was taken by some folks just casually flying by in space. It was taken on from the ISS on Jan. 31, 2008 on a Nikon D1, a camera you could buy today for about $140.
Astronaut photography has become a very popular thing lately. Often enough, they use consumer SLR cameras with long telephoto lenses. It's wild to me that the power of consumer electronics can deliver these images. (If I could get just get to space, my Canon could do this!)
It's kind of like a musician on stage calling out to people from different cities. "I see you, Greeley, but I can't hear you."
Of course, unmanned cameras have also captured our fine metro from space, too. Check out the time-lapse images we compiled last year from satellite imagery.
Also, this one doesn't include Denver, but man is it a view:
And for more on space shooting technique, in case you end up there:
