Chad Blakley

The green glow of the aurora seems to stretch from horizon to horizon in Chad Blakley's photo from Sweden's Abisko National Park.

Tonight is prime time for the Geminid meteor shower, but there's another kind of spectacle that skywatchers are seeing up north: auroral displays in the Christmas colors of green and red.

The green glow you see above was captured on camera last week by Chad Blakley, the photographer behind Lights Over Lapland in Sweden. "It's aurora season in Abisko National Park," he writes. Blakley runs nightly photo tours in the park when the northern lights are active. To see more of his work, visit the Lights Over Lapland website or Facebook page.

National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss has also been getting some amazing auroral views, thanks to a photo assignment that took him to Whitehorse in Canada's Yukon Territory. Theiss rented a car and drove hundreds of miles farther north to the Arctic Circle. He's been using his Twitter account (@MikeTheiss) to share a series of pictures from his Arctic adventure — including an amazing shot that shows a meteor streak shooting through the auroral lights. You can see that picture below.

We're also including a Christmas bonus: Time-lapse videos from Vimeo and YouTube that incorporate Blakley's and Theiss' pictures. If you're able to, watch them full screen with HD resolution.

For more of Theiss' work, check out UltimateChase.com or Douglas Main's story at OurAmazingPlanet. And if you're a fan of the northern lights or meteor showers, you'll want to click through SpaceWeather.com's photo galleries as well.

Tonight's early reports suggest that this year's Geminid display is shaping up as a great show. If you snap a picture of the meteors  — or the northern lights, for that matter — please consider sharing it with us via NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload page for sky highlights. If I get enough pictures, I'll pass them along on Friday.

Mike Theiss / National Geographic

Mike Theiss' picture from Canada's Yukon Territory features ripples of the northern lights - plus a meteor streak that can be seen on the right side.

More auroral glories:

• Northern lights shine with the moon
• 'Tis the season for the northern lights
• Your guide to the northern lights
• Cosmic Log auroral archive

Today's pictures also provide a different twist on the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which usually features a daily view of Earth from space during the holiday season. Today, we're highlighting views of space from Earth. To catch up on past calendar entries, follow the links below:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
• Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
• Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
• Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker
• Day 12: Skytree casts shadow on Tokyo
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

DigitalGlobe

The Tokyo Skytree rises 2,080 feet (634 meters) into the sky in a satellite picture acquired on April 4.

The Tokyo Skytree is considered the world's tallest broadcasting tower and the second-tallest human-made structure, so you should expect it to cast a blocks-long shadow on its surroundings in Japan's capital. The only building taller is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — which rises 2,717 feet high, compared with the 2,080-foot Skytree.

The Skytree offers a restaurant and observation decks as well as broadcasting facilities for eight TV networks and two FM radio stations. There's a shopping arcade next door that includes a planetarium and aquarium. The complex had its official opening in May and is expected to draw 32 million visitors a year — which is more than Tokyo Disneyland's typical tally.

This picture of the Skytree and its tall shadow was captured on April 7 by one of DigitalGlobe's orbiting satellites, and ranks among the company's top 20 images for 2012. Facebook users have been invited to press their "like" buttons to vote for their favorite pictures over the next week. On Dec. 19, the field will be narrowed down to the top five — and then there'll be a Facebook vote for the year's top satellite picture. Check out DigitalGlobe's blog for more about the contest.

For more awe-inspiring sights from space, click through these past entries from our Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar. We're featuring a fresh view of Earth from space every day from now until Christmas. And because you've been extra good this year, I've added a couple of Web links to other cosmic Advent calendars:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
• Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
• Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
• Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

Correction for 12:30 p.m. ET Dec. 13: At one point I added a phrase saying that Burj Khalifa was six stories higher than the Tokyo Skytree, but as a few commenters have pointed out, those would be mighty big stories, at roughly 100 feet per story. Sixty stories would be closer to the mark. Thanks for pointing out the estimating error, and apologies for getting it wrong.

Gene Cernan / NASA file

Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt faces the American flag on the lunar surface with Earth in the black sky above, during a moonwalk on Dec. 12, 1972.

In the 40 years since NASA's last lunar landing, the moon has had its ups and downs as the target for humanity's next giant leap — but the idea of returning to the moon is on the rise again.

Even though President Barack Obama dissed the moon a couple of years ago as a "been there, done that" destination, there's an enduring appeal to our closest celestial neighbor. Part of the appeal comes from planetary science, part of it comes from the moon's potential as a close-in gateway to the solar system — but a big part of it has to do with the moon's hold on our imagination, which took root before the pyramids were built.

When Apollo 17 touched down on Dec. 11, 1972, marking the final lunar landing of the Apollo program, the moon was the agreed-upon finish line for the Cold War's space race. But now the world has changed, and the case for going to the moon is more complicated.

"I've been referring to the moon as the Rodney Dangerfield of the solar system," said Andrew Chaikin, author of "Man on the Moon," the definitive history of the Apollo space program.

The moon hasn't gotten much respect in the past couple of years: After Obama's comment, the White House effectively canceled NASA's Constellation back-to-the-moon program. Instead, NASA set its sights on a visit to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and manned trips to Mars in the 2030s. Today, however, there are signs that the idea of going back to the moon isn't that loony after all:

• Two dozen teams are bearing down to try winning the multimillion-dollar Google Lunar X Prize, which goes to the first private venture to send a rover to the moon for a trek to be broadcast on live TV. Two of the teams, Odyssey Moon and SpaceIL, joined forces last month in hopes of taking the grand prize by the end of 2015.
• Last week, the Golden Spike Company proposed sending two-person expeditions to the moon on a commercial basis for $1.4 billion each — which is more than $100 billion less than what NASA was proposing back in 2005.
• China and Russia say they want to put their astronauts on the moon sometime after 2020, with or without NASA. As an initial step toward that giant leap, China is planning to send a robotic lander to the lunar surface next year. India also aspires to send spacefliers to the moon someday.
• NASA has floated the idea of setting up a new space station at a gravitational balance point beyond the far side of the moon, known as Earth-moon L2. The concept is currently stuck in political limbo, however.

Lunar comeback?
A report from the National Research Council faulted NASA last week for lacking a solid strategy for space exploration beyond Earth orbit, and said specifically that NASA's plan to visit an asteroid hasn't gotten enough support from international partners, or the American public, or even within the space agency itself.

John Logsdon, former director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, says Obama's next presidential term could provide the opening for a lunar comeback.

"It's certainly in the air here, that changes in the planning for exploration are coming," he said. "There's enough negative pressure that this asteroid goal isn't working, and enough positive pressure to work with the international community that wants to go back to the moon, that the White House will at some point approve the beginnings of a shift in exploration strategy — in which the moon, or at least the space between the earth and the vicinity of the moon, gets a much higher profile."

One of the early test missions for NASA's next-generation heavy-lift rocket — the Space Launch System, or SLS — would involve sending an unmanned Orion capsule all the way around the moon and back in the 2017 time frame. The first crewed mission, set for 2021, would put up to four astronauts into lunar orbit. "It could just as well be an initial mission to this Earth-moon L2 location," Logsdon said.

In September, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver declared that lunar missions would be part of the agency's grand scheme. "We're going back to the moon, attempting a first-ever mission to send humans to an asteroid and actively developing a plan to take Americans to Mars," she said.

Why go?
Chaikin, who has taken on the back-to-the-moon concept as his next crusade, said lunar missions could serve three purposes.

The first aim would be to study the preserved history of the solar system — following up on a scientific story that the Apollo missions were just beginning to uncover.  "I really think the moon deserves to be called a Rosetta stone, because it has unlocked our understanding of how we interpret the clues that we see on other worlds," Chaikin said.

Just as importantly, the moon serves as an "Outward Bound" school for farther space exploration. If a mission goes wrong, NASA could bring the astronauts back in a matter of days — rather than the weeks that an asteroid mission would involve, or the months required for a trip from Mars.

And then there's a phenomenon called the Overview Effect, which could conceivably attract lunar tourists a generation or two from now. "The moon is the only place in the solar system where you can stand on another world and have a consciousness-raising view of Earth," like the view that the Apollo 17 astronauts marveled at 40 years ago, Chaikin explained.

But Chaikin also warns against getting bogged down on the moon. That was the problem with the Constellation program. It called for a permanent settlement to be established on the moon in the 2020s. The cost? You don't want to know. Chaikin said it's better to use the moon "to learn about living off-planet" — to learn how to make use of the moon's water, dirt and rocks, for instance — and then move on to Mars.

The way Chaikin sees it, Apollo 17 was a beautiful ending to one era. Now it's time for the next one.

"Apollo 17 ended the program on a spectacular note," he said. "You can interpret that one of two ways. You can say, wonderful, they found a great way to end it. To some people at NASA, it was just the right time to get out. But on the other hand, here it is, 40 years later, and we're still waiting for someone to pick up where Apollo 17 left off. If we can do that, with the same level of scientific exploration, we'll be in great shape." 

Slideshow: Apollo 17: The last moonshot

NASA

Click through historic photos from humanity's last trip to the moon, the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Launch slideshow

More about the Apollo anniversary:

• Apollo 17's Blue Marble leaves its mark on our memory
• Harrison Schmitt remembers Apollo 17 like it was yesterday
• Flashback to 1997: Last moonwalkers look ahead
• Flash timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Panoramas.dk: 360-degree view from Apollo 17
• Audio slideshow: Voyage of the Millennium

In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's lunar landing, the picture of astronaut Harrison Schmitt with the American flag beside him and a tiny Earth above him serves as today's offering for the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from outer space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. Check out these other holiday goodies:

More space calendar entries:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
• Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
• Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar

NASA / EO-1 / USGS

This view of Tolbachik Volcano on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula was captured in infrared and visible light on Dec. 1 by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA's Earth Observing 1 satellite. The infrared readings in red highlight hot lava flows from the volcano.

Smoke and lava issue forth from Russia's Tolbachik Volcano in a pair of pictures from NASA's Earth Observing 1 satellite. What a difference in the perspectives!

The visible-light view from EO-1's Advanced Land Imager, captured on Dec. 1, shows billows of ash and steam, with a stream of dark lava cutting across the landscape.

In contrast, the infrared-plus-visible view reveals a nightmarish red river, running through a bilious green landscape. This version of the scene gets its eerie look from the false colors used to represent different wavelengths in the infrared part of the spectrum. The blood-red shade reflects the high surface temperatures of the lava, while the shades of green signify colder surroundings on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

A similar infrared-plus-visible image comes from the ASTER instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The ASTER image, our third view of Tolbachik's hell, combines a picture of the volcano from July 19 with fresh infrared data from Dec. 3 showing the lava flow.

The outburst marked Tolbachik's return to active status after 36 years of dormancy. The lava flows reportedly destroyed two research camps and forced school closures in nearby villages. Some experts worry that Tolbachik could unleash an eruption as powerful as Eyjafjallajökull's Icelandic blast, which disrupted trans-Atlantic air traffic for weeks back in 2010.

In the past few days, Russian authorities have downgraded Tolbachik's alert status from red to orange. Nevertheless, the mountain bears watching: Denison University volcanologist Erik Klemetti is monitoring the situation on his Eruptions blog.

NASA / EO-1 / USGS

The visible-light view from NASA's EO-1 satellite shows Tolbachik's lava flow as a river of darkness cutting through the snowy scene.

NASA / GSFC / METI / ERSDAC / JAROS via AFP

A false-color view from the ASTER imager on NASA's Terra satellite shows the Tolbachik Volcano and its surroundings in infrared and visible wavelengths. A scene from July 19 provides the background, with vegetation in red, older lava flows in dark gray and snow in white. A nighttime thermal infrared image, acquired Dec. 3, has been overlaid on the earlier image and highlights the hot lava flows in bright yellow.

More vistas from space:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

NASA / AFP

This image from Dec. 7, 1972, shows a view of Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew - Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt - as they traveled toward the moon. The view extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to Antarctica. This was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap.

It's been exactly 40 years since NASA sent astronauts to the moon for the last time, and even though more than half of all Americans weren't alive when Apollo 17 got off the ground, the mission still has a big impact on our collective memory. And perhaps the biggest impact comes in the form of a single photograph, the original Blue Marble picture of Earth's full disk.

Hours after their launch on Dec. 7, 1972, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan and his crewmates — Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans — oohed and ahhed over their home planet, suspended in the blackness outside their window. "I know we're not the first to discover this, but we'd like to confirm ... that the world is round," Cernan told Mission Control.

Astronauts had been seeing the full planet from beyond Earth orbit since 1968, when Apollo 8 made a looping trip around the moon and back. In fact, Apollo 8's "Earthrise" picture of our planet at the moon's horizon also ranks among the most memorable space pictures ever taken. But there was something extraordinary about the view during Apollo 17's trip: The planet's entire disk was sunlit — a sight that astronauts had never captured on film before. The trajectory provided the best look yet at Antarctica, and Schmitt marveled over the clear view of Africa.

"If there ever was a fragile-appearing piece of blue in space, it's the Earth right now," Schmitt said.

When the original picture was released, it made front pages around the world — and it inspired a continuing series of Blue Marble images, including a version that's been commonly used on iPhone displays. Just this week, NASA released a set of "Black Marble" nighttime satellite pictures to add to the Marble repertoire.

Slideshow: Apollo 17: The last moonshot

NASA

Click through historic photos from humanity's last trip to the moon, the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Launch slideshow

The Blue Marble wasn't Apollo 17's only cultural legacy. Here are a few other memes that came out of the 12-day mission:

• Doing science in space: Apollo 17 was the first NASA mission to include a professional scientist: Harrison Schmitt, who had a Ph.D. in geology. John Logsdon, former director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, recalls that Apollo 16 and 17 were almost canceled during the Nixon administration due to budgetary concerns. "It was the outcry from the science community ... and the fact that Nixon really didn't want to cancel them, that saved those missions," Logsdon said. Apollo 17 was arguably the most scientifically oriented mission to the moon — and helped set the precedent for research on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
• The beauty of a night launch: The post-midnight launch marked the first time that a NASA manned spacecraft took off at night, and the brilliant blaze of the Saturn 5 rising into the darkness became another iconic picture. It would be more than a decade before the next night launch from Florida: the shuttle Challenger's liftoff on STS-8 in 1983.
• Orange soil: One of the most remarkable scientific discoveries came when Schmitt spotted orange-colored soil during the second of the mission's three moonwalks in the Taurus-Littrow valley. "It's all over! Orange!" he said. He and Cernan made sure that the stuff was included in the mission's 243 pounds (110 kilograms) of lunar rock and dirt — the largest haul of samples ever brought back from the moon. Researchers determined that the orange soil consisted of glass beads formed from lava ejected during volcanic eruptions on the moon, about 3.7 billion years ago. Such findings have helped scientists understand the violent processes that were at work on the moon early in its existence.
• Singin' on the moon: The astronauts had serious work to do during their three days on the lunar surface, but there were moments of levity as well. The best-known moment came when Cernan and Schmitt crooned a tune as they skipped on the moon. "I was strolling on the moon one day, in the very merry month of December," they sang.
• Last man on the moon: When Cernan prepared to climb up the ladder from the moon's surface into the Challenger lunar module for the last time, he told Mission Control that he believed the next steps on the moon would be made "not too long into the future." Logsdon said it was well-known at the time that the next moon mission wouldn't happen for a decade or more. "But I don't think any of us thought it would be 40 years, or really more than a half-century," Logsdon said.

NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, told me that Cernan isn't fond of his "last man on the moon" title. "He likes to be called 'the most recent astronaut on the moon,'" Barbree said. "That's his way of saying we're going back."

This week, Bloomberg.com's James Clash quoted Cernan as saying that he "honestly believed it wasn't the end, but the beginning." At the time, he told himself, "We're not only going back, but by the end of the century, humans will be well on their way to Mars."

Cernan also told Clash that he regretted missing out on what would have been another picture for the ages:

"I left my Hasselblad camera there with the lens pointing up at the zenith, the idea being someday someone would come back and find out how much deterioration solar cosmic radiation had on the glass.

"So, going up the ladder, I never took a photo of my last footstep. How dumb! Wouldn’t it have been better to take the camera with me, get the shot, take the film pack off and then (for weight restrictions) throw the camera away?"

How long will it be before someone comes across Cernan's camera and does the damage assessment? If you remember the Apollo moon missions, what did they mean to you back then, and what do they mean to you today? If you don't remember Apollo, do those missions still tug at your psyche, or does this all seem like ancient history? Feel free to leave your remarks or reminiscences as comments below, or send them as emails to cosmiclog@msnbc.com. I'll compile the best of the bunch for a follow-up item next week. We'll also have a look at how the moon may (or may not) figure in future space exploration.

Update for 6 p.m. ET: So who took the Blue Marble picture? That's been the subject of debate for decades, and no one at NASA has ever come up with a definitive answer. "I've actually been to events where all three of them kind of jokingly take credit for it," NASA's Mike Gentry told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 1999. The question has apparently been a sore point for Schmitt and Cernan in recent years, but when Barbree asked Cernan about the matter, the mission commander took the standard diplomatic line. Here's what Barbree says Cernan told him about who had the camera: "We were passing it around, and passing it around, and we really don't know who shot it. One of us did."

More about moonshots:

• Harrison Schmitt remembers Apollo 17 like it was yesterday
• Flashback to 1997: Last moonwalkers look ahead
• Flash timeline: Glory Days on the Final Frontier
• Panoramas.dk: 360-degree view from Apollo 17
• Audio slideshow: Voyage of the Millennium
• Apollo 18 in fiction and fact

In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17's launch, the original Blue Marble serves as today's offering for the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features views of Earth from outer space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. Check out these other holiday goodies:

More space calendar entries:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

NASA Earth Observatory

The night lights of the Americas shine in this visualization of our planet at night, which is based on data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October. The image, released by NASA Earth Observatory today, has been nicknamed the "Black Marble."

NASA is known for its "Blue Marble" images, which show Earth's sunlit disk as seen from space — and now it's making a splash with the nighttime view, nicknamed the "Black Marble."

This picture of the night lights of North and South America is just one frame in the Black Marble series, which is based on data from the Suomi NPP satellite and was unveiled today during the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The image has been built up from readings made by the weather/climate satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS.

It'd be tough to snap this kind of picture at any single moment, because of cloud cover as well as seasonal changes in the way sunlight falls on our planet. Suomi NPP's handlers had an easier job, because the satellite could make multiple passes in April and October. Those fly-overs produced data that could be presented as a full-disk nighttime view of Earth.

NASA says the VIIRS instrument's "day-night band" is well-suited to pick up on dim signals such as city lights as well as gas flares, auroras, wildifires and reflected moonlight. For the Black Marble images, stray sources of light were removed during processing to emphasize the city lights.

"Artificial lighting is an excellent remote-sensing observable and proxy for human activity," Chris Elvidge, who leads the Earth Observation Group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center, said in today's image advisory.

Weather forecasters are using the VIIRS imagery to track fog and low clouds through the night — which can be a concern for high-traffic coastal airports such as San Francisco. But it's not just about the weather: Researchers can track night lights over time to estimate economic activity and population growth. For example, satellite images graphically show how North Korea's economic development has lagged behind that of its neighbors, or how India has developed through the decades. Night-light pictures can also help facility planners decide where to put astronomical observatories that need dark skies, or help emergency officials gauge the extent of power outages. 

“For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also need to see Earth at night,” Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA’s Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, said in a NASA news release. “Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps.”

NASA Earth Observatory / NOAA NGDC

This composite map of the world was assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.

Check out the full array of Black Marble imagery, including an animation, at the NASA Earth Observatory website or Goddard Space Flight Center's Flickr gallery. Oh, and don't miss NASA's "White Marble."

These Black Marble views serve as today's offering in the Cosmic Log Advent Space Calendar, which cracks open a fresh picture of Earth as seen from space on a daily basis from now until Christmas. For more Advent calendar goodness, turn to The Atlantic's Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar and the Zooniverse Advent Calendar.

More images of Earth from space:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JSC

The storm clouds of Typhoon Bopha form a spiral far below the International Space Station in a photo captured on Sunday. The storm gained strength Monday, turning into a super typhoon with sustained winds greater than 150 mph. That's the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported.

The awesome power of Typhoon Bopha was in full view of the International Space Station over the weekend, and since then the Pacific storm has strengthened to super typhoon status with sustained winds greater than 150 mph (240 kilometers per hour). The storm was headed for the Philippines, where memories of last year's killer storm are still fresh.

"The potential destruction of this typhoon is no joke," Reuters quoted Philippine President Benigno Aquino as saying in a nationally broadcast address. Thousands of residents of coastal and mountain regions were evacuated in advance of the storm.

Bopha is expected to make landfall on the southern island of Mindanao within hours. The same region was hit last year by Tropical Storm Washi, which killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 60,000. This time around, the storm's winds are more than twice as strong, qualifying Bopha as the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said waves reached heights of up to 52 feet at sea near the storm, and the width of the storm system was estimated at 370 miles (600 kilometers). Keep an eye on The Weather Channel's Hurricane Central as the storm proceeds. And for more imagery from NASA, keep an eye on the agency's Hurricane Resource Page as well as Goddard Space Flight Center's Flickr photostream.

NASA / JSC

Typhoon Bopha swirls hundreds of miles below the International Space Station on Sunday, in a photo taken by one of the astronauts on board. A piece of Russian hardware is visible in the foreground at upper right, bearing the words "Mission Control" in Russian.

CIMSS / NASA / NOAA / UW-Madison

A false-color infrared image, captured today by the Suomi NPP satellite, shows details of Super Typhoon Bopha's structure. For more typhoon imagery of the storm from Suomi NPP, check out the University of Wisconsin's CIMSS Satellite Blog.

More views of Earth from space:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Month in Space Pictures: November 2012

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / GSFC / METI / ERSDAC / JAROS

This view of the eastern part of the Grand Canyon is based on data acquired by the ASTER instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite on July 14, 2011.

For years, geologists have debated just how old the Grand Canyon is, but there's no debate that the geological feature ranks among the world's top landmarks. This outer-space perspective from NASA's Terra satellite makes you realize just how monumental the American Southwest's grandest canyon is.

Was the Grand Canyon formed less than 7 million years ago? Or as long ago as 70 million years? The conventional wisdom has been that most of the canyon was cut by the Colorado River in the last 5 million to 6 million years. But last week, researchers said a new dating tool suggested that rocks from the canyon's western portion were eroded 70 million years ago, by an ancient river that ran in a direction opposite from the westward-flowing Colorado.

The claims add to a longstanding argument over the canyon's formation. In 2008, a different team of researchers concluded that the western Grand Canyon was carved out at least 16 million years ago — and that the eastern portion arose separately, due the uplift of the Colorado Plateau. In this scenario, the two sections of the Grand Canyon eventually linked up to create the awesome vista we see today. 

The Terra satellite's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, better known as ASTER, took a close look at a section of the canyon in northern Arizona last year. The perspective you see here was produced by "draping" ASTER's color data over an elevation map developed from the satellite's stereo readings. You can just make out the traces of the Grand Canyon Village's tourist facilities amid the greenish patch at upper left.

The Grand Canyon is truly one of the world's marvels, measuring up to 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) in width and 5,600 feet (1,707 meters) in depth. For even wider-angle views, check out this 2004 image from India's Resourcesat-1 satellite, as well as this image, captured in 2000 by NASA's Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer. (Get out your red-blue glasses for a 3-D look.)

These views of the Grand Canyon serve as today's treat from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features a daily look at Earth from space from now until Christmas. For still more Advent calendar goodies with a cosmic twist, check out The Atlantic's Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar, as well as the Zooniverse Advent Calendar. And be sure to click on the links below to catch up on the pictures you've missed:

• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Month in Space Pictures: November 2012

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.