Though astronauts and cosmonauts often encounter striking scenes of Earth's limb, this very unique image, part of a series over Earth's colorful horizon, has the added feature of a silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour. This NASA shuttle is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship that took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771). This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, rather than the American English (“Endeavor”).
The image was photographed by an Expedition 22 crewmember prior to STS-130 rendezvous and docking operations with the International Space Station on Feb. 9, 2010. The orange layer is the troposphere, where all of the weather and clouds, which we typically watch and experience, are generated and contained. This orange layer gives way to the whitish Stratosphere and then into the Mesosphere.
Location: Space
Photograph Date: 2010
Medium: Chromogenic Print
Edition: 200
