My 8th grade Earth Science students requested this image from the International Space Station's EarthKAM camera during the April, 2016 EarthKAM Mission.  During the time of the photograph, a cool, clear high pressure system was situated over the northeastern United States, making for excellent viewing opportunities.  If you teach science, the EarthKAM program is a free NASA resource you really should look into.  More info can be found here: https://www.earthkam.org.  The actual image is hosted on the EarthKAM servers, which are managed by the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  If you click the picture link, there are opportunities to download this an other images at various resolutions:   http://images.earthkam.org/main.php?g2_itemId=588076  By clicking the "next image" and "previous image" buttons, you can sometimes view excellent overlapping images taken by the ISS as it orbited Earth at an astounding speed of 17,000 mph, close to 5 miles a second!  There are at least two April, 2016 EarthKAM images which caught the PSU campus and surrounding countryside.  Plenty of other excellent pictures of Earth from this and other EarthKAM missions going back nearly a decade.  Check them out in the EarthKAM image galleries.

One of the more interesting things that you can do with these EarthKAM images is to compare them with the images hosted by Google Earth to see change over time.  To make that easier, here is a Google Maps link to the EarthKAM image discussed in this post  (works best with Chrome browser).

Look - we found "E" (for Earth) and "S" (for Science) on rocks! And we already knew that Earth Science rocks! Actually, these compass directions are part of the markers in the Stopford Family Meadow Maze at Tyler Arboretum (link is external) in Media, PA.

I've always been amazed by the beautiful star trail photos I see professional photographers make.  Apprarently, it's really not that difficult to take these, and there are tons of websites that will walk you through the process.  This one is a "stacked" image that combines 30, 2 min exposures at f/4 and iso400.  Camera was a Canon 70D with a 18-55mm lens set to 24mm.  Total photo time - 60 minutes (1hr).  Based on this, I would expect that each of the star trails, which are caused by Earth's rotation, would trace out an arc of 1/24th of a full 360 degree circle, or about 15 degrees or arc, with Polaris at the center.  Notice the pulsed light from an airplane that flew over at some point during the hour.

Aside from "stacking" the images with free software available online, the picture was not adjusted or enhanced in any other major way.  More to come once I figure out how to work the camera and intervalometer better!

Picture taken from 10:55pm-11:55pm looking due north at approximate altitude of 40 degrees, from my back yard in Pipersville, PA.

Succession is causing Hickory Run State Park's Boulder Field to shrink, albeit quite slowly, as trees take root amongst the rocks.  The field, which is the size of ten football fields, is believed to have been formed during the last ice age.