it's 4am and i can't sleep, so i thought i would post some astronaut-photos. theres a very cool collection of pics taken from orbit that show some really unique perspectives on the planet. http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/EFS/ here's a few that i've grabbed.



here's where i work - haleakala, maui. if you zoom in to the triangle of clouds, you can see a white spec along a rift zone (line of circles). i use one of those.




da big ailan. i'll be there thurs-mon. liz is stuck in the kona side desert watching other people work to make sure that they don't do stupid things or cheat on their contract. it's a very interesting part of her job. if you don't send somebody to watch workers do what you hired them to do, it won't get done right and you'll be stuck with the bill because suing them is more costly than just eating it and hiring somebody else. so, she's on the top left side of the picure, counting how many times people pound the dirt that will become the dirt under houses.




honolulu, oahu. U. H. is the cluster of buildings right in the center, to the left of one of the ridges (brown fingers). diamond head (leahi) is in the bottom right, next to waikiki. the tourists flock to the little strip of white in the bottom of the pic.




ayers rock - a 1km tall rock in the middle of the australian desert has become a speck on this pic....




thanks to china's growing oil habit, and general environmental disregard in emulation of the rest of us, here's a nice stream of crap headed towards hawaii. interestingly enough, there's a species of tree on kauai that relies heavily on potassium from the gobi desert that is carried from chinas deep interior all the way here, along with plenty of that other junk. i've got another shot of an african dust storm that was making it's way across the atlantic somewhere....




the mountain in En-Zed that stood out the most. awesome hike!




the En-Zed thermal/volcanic area taupo/rotorua - we spent a ton of time there and i think got some of the best night pics ever. check out liz's NZ posts - she's been writing up a day-by-day travel log....