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Yuri Malenchenko / NASA via Twitpic
This photograph, taken on Nov. 9 from the International Space Station, shows a rugged range of Asian peaks. Initially the mountains were identified as the Himalayas, with Mount Everest in the center, but since then experts on the region have said the picture actually shows a different mountain range.
Some of the highest mountains in the world were far below Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko when he took this picture a month ago from the International Space Station. Now Malenchenko has come back down to Earth, but the picture has been getting sky-high attention from the Twitterverse — in part because of a debate over what it shows.
Peter Caltner, a.k.a. @PC0101, put the picture into his Twitpic feed on Saturday, calling it an outer-space view of Mount Everest. NASA astronaut Ron Garan — a recent space station resident known on Twitter as @Astro_Ron — picked up on the pic with a tweet of his own. "I never got a good shot of Mt. Everest from space," he wrote. In a follow-up, Garan explained to The Atlantic's Rebecca J. Rosen why he missed out on that Everest snapshot.
Since then, folks who are familiar with the area have tweeted that the picture shows a different range of mountains. "This is ... Sasan Kangari — near India, Pakistan and Tibet border," Phalano reported.
"So, definitely not Everest," Kunda Dixit wrote back. "Whew. My reputation was on the line."
This picture isn't the only gem from Malenchenko: Caltner's Twitpic gallery features more of the cosmonaut's outer-space photos — including new nighttime views of St. Louis, Tokyo and the Sea of Brightness off the coast of South Korea. Check 'em out. And while you're at it, check out these other views of our planet from above. They're part of the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features a daily look at Earth from space, every day from now until Christmas:
- 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
- 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
Correction for 6:50 p.m. ET: I've updated the original version of this item with the "Is it Everest, or isn't it?" debate. The Atlantic updated its original item with a different picture of Everest, taken in 2004.
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.
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Even from up there it looks big.
When you consider how large Mt. Everest looks from the ground on the trudge up to base camp, this really doesn't do it justice. It is, however very interesting to note that the mountain sits out there alone and is not directly connected to any range or ridge.
spend billions of dollars and uncountable manhours of research to put man in space and they take photos of the damn mountains....lol.
But it's a really nice picture... :)
For sure...just seemed strange to me when I read the article I guess. It looks really tiny from up there...hell the whole mountain range looks tiny from up there.
I suppose that's part of the research? I guess once your safely up there what else is there to do with all your time?
You do realize that the astronauts on the ISS do have at least a little downtime, don't you Al? It's not all sleep and work for them?
Amazing view. Hardly a cloud in sight, which is quite unusual.
I guess that is Lhotse just to the right?
Just think, a few more years of climate change and we'll be able to scale both w/o the need of cold weather gear! Be there in our flips and our tanks! ;-)
just need some photoshop work imo ;)
if you didnt know better youd think it would have been through photoshop with the lack of clouds
if you didnt know better youd think it would have been through photoshop with the lack of clouds.
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freaking amazing and perspective-placing
Nice photo. But it's NOT of Everest!!
There are photos of Everest taken from the Space Station (e.g., ), but this isn't one of them.
Oops, the URL I tried to include in my original message got stripped out -- too long? Here's another try, with the slashes replaced by blank spaces: < www.nasa.gov multimedia imagegallery image_feature_152.html >.
To me the snow cover on these mountains seems very low for this time of the year! Can anyone shed some light on that.
Not Everest. Nor Chomolungma, Xomolungma, or Sagarmatha. Possibly Sasen Mustagh or Shishapangma. Very hard to ID peaks from overhead.
Not Everest.
Nor Sagarmatha, Chomolungma, Xomolangma, etc. Possibly Shishapangma. Hard to ID from overhead angle.
This is a view of the Saser Kangri group as seen from the southwest. Saser Kangri I is the large peak in the center of the picture. The Shyok River flows from left to right diagonally across the top of the image. This group is in Pakistan, approximately 100 miles south and east of the K2 area.
Damn libs!