natgeofound:

Fifty-two stories high, city noises fade and vistas expand. Chicago, June 1967.
Photograph by James L. Stanfield, National Geographic

colchrishadfield:

Spaceflight finale: To some this may look like a sunset. But it’s a new dawn.

colchrishadfield:

Overhead of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, floating above our glowing blue sphere.

Chris Hadfield is my favorite.

jtotheizzoe:

Not quite a scene from E.T., but close …

What a stunning shot of the moon! Not only does this perfectly capture the optical oddities of the “moon illusion” (why the moon looks bigger near the horizon), but when you think about the sheer technical mastery that went in to making it happen … WOW!

Philipp Schmidli (his website, in German) set up on a hillside a kilometer away so he could get this angle, after scouting the perfect spot on foot using GPS. To get the photo he needed to use a 1200 mm focal length, which is like a reverse-sniper-rifle of optical input. The moon illusion is enhanced by that telephoto trick, too, but you can head over to io9 if you want to dig into the technical details (several commenters there have done a good job with it).

But wow.

theatlantic:

An Utterly Terrifying Picture Taken From the Top of the Burj Khalifa

Earlier this week, fearless photographer Joe McNally uploaded this image on his Instragram feed.

[Image: @joemcnally]