Here’s the lat­est video release from NASA, and it’s anoth­er won­drous time-lapse film from the Inter­nal Space Sta­tion. It’s called “Earth Illu­mi­nat­ed.” If you could sit back and enjoy these videos for hours, you’re in luck. NASA has cre­at­ed a web­site — The Gate­way to Astro­naut Pho­tog­ra­phy of Earth — that brings togeth­er all of its images, still and mov­ing. You can find pho­tographs here and time-lapse videos like “Earth Illu­mi­nat­ed” here. Or you can skip to the Week­ly Top Ten sec­tion, where NASA lists the ten most down­loaded images from the Gate­way with­in the past week. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

The Mars rover Curios­i­ty car­ried a Descent Imager (essen­tial­ly a glo­ri­fied HD col­or cam­era), and accord­ing to Planetary.org, it start­ed shoot­ing images at a rate of 4.5 frames per sec­ond upon its descent. We’ll even­tu­al­ly get access to high-res images (1600 by 1200 pix­els). But, in the mean­time, Curios­i­ty has already beamed back 297 thumb­nail images that have been stitched into a stop ani­ma­tion video, giv­ing you anoth­er look at the dra­mat­ic land­ing. The action starts with Curios­i­ty los­ing its heat shield and ends with it touch­ing down on Mars. How cool is that?

Dur­ing his time on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), astro­naut Don Pet­tit endeared him­self to me in two ways. First, he invent­ed a handy-dandy “zero‑g cof­fee cup” that lets you drink cof­fee in space with­out using a straw — some­thing we’ll all hope­ful­ly use one day. Next, between 2002 and 2008, he took some strik­ing images of great cities and their lights shin­ing at night. The open­ing min­utes explain how the shots were actu­al­ly tak­en. Then, at the 1:45 mark, the tour begins. Zurich, Milan, Madrid, Athens, Lon­don, Cairo (includ­ing the Pyra­mids), Jerusalem, Mec­ca, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, San Fran­cis­co, Las Vegas (the bright­est spot on earth) — they’re all includ­ed on the tour.

Pet­tit nar­rates the entire video. And, along the way, he takes care to under­score an inter­est­ing point — each cul­ture cre­ates its cities in its own way, using dif­fer­ent­ly geo­graph­ic lay­outs and tech­nolo­gies. Those dif­fer­ences we can see on the ground from one per­spec­tive, and from out­er space from yet anoth­er van­tage point.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains What Hap­pens If You Fall into a Black Hole

The Auro­ra Bore­alis Viewed from Orbit (and What Cre­ates Those North­ern Lights?)

What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space