A rare time-lapse clip showing a bird’s-eye view of our planet from outer space in one minute has surfaced on the Web.



The video shows a collection of 600 images downloaded from Nasa’s astronaut database and merged together by science blogger James Drake.

During the clip, storms over the Pacific Ocean, the Earth’s ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars in our galaxy are illustrated as the International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth.



Heavily populated urban areas can be seen beautifully lit up in the dark of night.



The 62-second montage begins over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 220 miles and continues over North and South America before sunrise near Antarctica.

[ Related story: Nasa finds planet orbiting two suns]





Mr Drake notes in order of appearance a few of the places that can be seen in the stunning clip, including Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, the Amazon, Peru and Chile.



The images were hand-picked from the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth which contains over a million snaps of the planet dating back to the 1960’s.

























