Do you enjoy looking down the airplane window to watch how the minuscule city scape, the tiny automobiles, lush fields in block patterns or may be snowcapped peaks vanish under the clouds? If yes, then you would definitely like to experience a mesmerizing journey of the earth as seen from the International Space Station [ISS]!

This is actually a time-lapse video put together by James Drake, integrating about 600 images captured from the ISS. The brief video starts from the Pacific Ocean, crosses North and South America ending in a brilliant sunrise in Antarctica.

Although the sparkling city lights steal the show, two other factors that make you curious are the random bursts of white light along shore lines and a brown-green arc above the periphery.

The white lights as stated by POPSCI are in fact lightning strikes while Discover Magazine explains the colorful arc as “an aerosol haze, a glow caused by particles suspended high above the planet’s surface. It’s an extremely thin layer, so it’s best seen edge-on, for the same reason some very thin shells in space are bright only around the edges.”

Popsci, Discovermagazine