Earth at Night and in Motion

Five images of a planet that never holds still. The aurora over the North Pacific was shot from the International Space Station about 433 kilometres up, green light moving fast enough that the exposure has to guess where it will be next. Chennai's street grid and the fishing fleet off the Arabian Sea are the same station looking down after dark: a city traced in light, a scatter of small lights on open water, each one a boat.

The lenticular cloud over Taieri was recorded by Landsat 8 from orbit: a standing wave of air holding its shape over one spot while the wind that shaped it keeps moving through. None of these are studio pictures. They are a spacecraft's ordinary view of a planet that keeps doing something.