It's been a great year for views of Earth at night from space — in part because of the upswing in solar activity, and in part because more observers are taking better advantage of NASA's voluminous image databases.

German filmmaker Michael König has drawn together some of the best time-lapse sequences from the International Space Station, which were captured from orbit between August and October and archived at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

König says he "refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut" the footage for his compilation. "All in all, I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original
footage itself already has an almost surreal" look, he says on the Vimeo website.

The results certainly made a splash: It was picked up by Britain's ITN television network, as demonstrated by the video above. The full HD version reveals crackling lightning storms, whirling stars and whizzing satellites in the skies above, and the arc of airglow at the edge of the atmosphere. The stars of the show are the rippling auroral displays, which have been shining in abundance this year due to an increase in geomagnetic storms.

Give König's video a look, and enjoy the spacey soundtrack by Jan Jelinek:

More amazing imagery from orbit:

• See the world from outer space ... in 60 seconds
• Fly over the southern lights on the space station
• Spaceships bask in the glow of the aurora
• Red sky at night, astronaut's delight
• Atlantis' descent witnessed from the space station
• Solar storms spark beautiful blasts over Earth
• India-Pakistan border shines out into space
• Egypt's river of light snakes through the night
• Slideshow: Month in Space Pictures

Tip o' the Log to Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

It's been a great summer for auroral displays, and especially from space. Here's a time-lapse video showing the International Space Station's passage over the southern lights on Sept. 11. The tour begins with the station arcing southeast over eastern Australia, passing over New Zealand and then heading northeast in its inclined orbit. There's a dense cloud cover over Earth's surface, but that just makes the ripples of green light stand out even more.

The 26-second video was compiled from about 16 minutes' worth of photo-snapping by the space station's crew, from their vantage point in the orbiting outpost's Cupola observation deck. (Make sure you're watching the PhotoBlog wide-screen version.)

North or south, auroral lights are sparked when electrically charged ions from the solar wind interact with atoms in the upper atmosphere. In an advisory about the video, NASA notes that green is the most common auroral shade, coming from the light emitted from emitted oxygen atoms. Flashes of red show up here and there. You can also see a golden glow visible along the rim of the atmosphere, just above the curving horizon. That airglow is caused by the excitation of atoms by ultraviolet radiation.

For a big assortment of Earth views from NASA, check out the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, and for auroral views feast your eyes on SpaceWeather.com's Aurora Gallery. Here are a few more must-see examples of our Earth at night, as seen from the International Space Station:

• See the world from outer space ... in 60 seconds
• Atlantis' descent witnessed from the space station
• Solar storms spark beautiful blasts over Earth
• India-Pakistan border shines out into space
• Egypt's river of light snakes through the night
• Slideshow: Month in Space Pictures

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds. 

Ron Garan / NASA

A nearly new moon takes on an otherworldly glow in a picture taken from the International Space Station. "This is what the moon looked like 16 times today," astronaut Ron Garan writes.

Common sights like the streets of New York or a setting moon take on an unearthly look when they're seen from the International Space Station.

This photo of the just-past-new moon was taken after one of Sunday's sunsets by Ron Garan, one of the six astronauts aboard the space station.

It's just "one of" the day's sunsets because the station circles Earth every hour and a half, passing through multiple cycles of day and night, sunrise and sunset. The sun's wavelengths are refracted by the edge of Earth's atmosphere to produce a beautiful display of red and blue rising up from the horizon toward the moon. Even the dark of the moon is slightly light, thanks to the "Earthshine" reflected by our planet's surface.

"This is what the moon looked like 16 times today from space," Garan wrote.

Garan's pictures serve as a reminder that NASA's human spaceflight program is alive and well despite this month's retirement of the space shuttle fleet. Americans, Russians and spacefliers from other countries are due to continue their work in orbit for years to come, supported by Russian, European and Japanese transports — and soon by commercial U.S. spaceships as well.

During the current rotation, Garan has been serving as the six-person crew's unofficial photographer, taking over from Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. Garan's orbital snapshots appear on his Twitpic page, and you'll find many more musings about life in space on his website, Fragile Oasis.

Right now Garan is in the midst of a series of blog postings about "the next chapter of human spaceflight," he's working on zero-gravity experiments focusing on fuel efficiency and plant growth, and he's also getting set to play a supporting role inside the station during this week's Russian-led spacewalk. But he still found time to take awesome pictures of these earthly scenes from nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) abpve.

Ron Garan / NASA

The boroughs of New York City are on display in this image captured from the International Space Station. "Looks like it was a great day in the Big Apple from space," NASA astronaut Ron Garan writes.

Ron Garan / NASA

Greece, Turkey and their surroundings are spread out in shades of blue and brown in this space-station view. "From the Black Sea to the Nile to Libya, a wonderful view of our fragile oasis," NASA astronaut Ron Garan writes.

"You're struck by the indescribable beauty of our planet," Garan told the New York Daily News' Mike Jaccarino. "You feel this overwhelming gratitude that we've been given this gift. It fills me with some sadness, too, though, at how we've treated this gift, to see how fragile it is, and see that paper-thin atmosphere.

"I wish everybody could see this with their own eyes."

Until then, Garan and his fellow fliers will just have to keep on giving us the next-best thing.

More views from space:

• Space station takes center stage
• Space station watches shuttle's descent
• Southern lights are sweeter in space
• Slideshow: Month in Space Pictures

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

NASA

The International Space Station looms above Earth during the unorthodox Atlantis fly-around on July 19. The moon can be seen above and to the right of the station.

It's been standard procedure for the space shuttle to make a fly-around and take pictures of the International Space Station just as it's pulling away for the homeward journey. But the procedure was changed for this month's very last visit by the space shuttle Atlantis. After the shuttle backed 600 feet away, pilot Doug Hurley held it in position while the space station rotated 90 degrees to the right. Then Hurley made a half-loop around the station, to give Atlantis' crew members an opportunity to snap pictures of the station from angles never before photographed during a fly-around.

Here are some of the high-resolution pictures. Scores of additional images focus in on details that NASA engineers wanted to check. "The images will be evaluated by experts on the ground to get additional information on the condition of the station's exterior," NASA said.

NASA

The International Space Station's solar panels are nearly edge-on in this view. Two Russian Soyuz lifeboats and two Progress cargo ships are docked on the left side.

NASA

Earth spreads out nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) below in the background of this unusual view of the International Space Station.

NASA

The sun shines brightly on the International Space Station in this parting shot, captured by Atlantis' crew.

More views from the last shuttle mission:

• Last looks at the shuttle in orbit
• Space station crew watches Atlantis descend
• Photographers capture Atlantis' last landing
• Southern lights are sweeter in space
• Aircraft captures unique view of launch 
• Shuttle Atlantis' last trek to liftoff 
• Atlantis' flight on PhotoBlog

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Thierry Legault / Astrophoto.fr

A three-image composite tracks the International Space Station and the shuttle Atlantis as they move across the sun's disk on July 15.

They look like alien bugs hopping across the sun, but these specks may represent the very last pictures of a space shuttle in orbit as seen from Earth.

French astrophotographer Thierry Legault, an expert in the technique of tracking spacecraft silhouettes, captured these views of the International Space Station and the shuttle Atlantis during their final rendezvous. Atlantis landed today, bringing the 30-year space shuttle program to an end.

The picture above is a composite, showing three views of the station-shuttle complex as it passed over the sun's disk on July 15. Legault had to travel to just the right location to get the shot. This one was taken from Caen in France. The entire transit took just seven-tenths of a second. Legault has labeled the shuttle and elements of the space station in this higher-resolution view:

Thierry Legault / Astrophoto.fr

The labels on this image point out the position of Atlantis and components of the International Space Station during a July 15 transit.

In an email, Legault told me that he traveled through the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands to capture the silhouettes. One picture, snapped north of Prague and posted to Legault's website, shows the space station and the shuttle side by side, 50 minutes after Atlantis' undocking earlier this week.

Legault produced the piece de resistance today during a stopover near Emden, in northern Germany. It may not look quite as impressive as the others, but it could well be more historic. Legault wrote that the picture was taken "just 21 minutes before the deorbit burn, therefore there are chances that it is the very last image of a space shuttle in orbit."

Here's a composite of four images, taken during the 0.9-second-long transit. The silhouettes of Atlantis are highlighted within white circles:

Thierry Legault / Astrophoto.fr

A four-image composite tracks Atlantis' transit across the sun's disk, just 21 minutes before today's deorbit burn. The white circles highlight Atlantis.

For the telescope and camera buffs out there, Legault says the images were produced using a Takahashi TOA-150 6-inch apochromatic refractor (focal length 3600mm) on an EM-400 mount, with a Baader Herschel wedge. The camera is a Canon 5D Mark II, set for an exposure of 1/8000s, 100 ISO, working in continuous shooting at four frames per second. Transit forecasts were calculated by www.calsky.com.

Merci beaucoup to Thierry for sharing his pictures with us through the years.

More great views of Atlantis:

• Space station crew watches Atlantis descend
• Photographers capture Atlantis' last landing
• Southern lights are sweeter in space
• Aircraft captures unique view of launch 
• Shuttle Atlantis' last trek to liftoff 
• Atlantis' flight on PhotoBlog

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA file

A fish-eye view of the International Space Station, captured by NASA spacewalker Ron Garan, features the recently delivered Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in the foreground. A Russian Progress cargo ship and a Soyuz crew capsule are docked on the left end of the station. The structure to the left of the AMS is a radiator. One of the station's gold-colored solar arrays is visible in the background. And off to the right, the shuttle Atlantis is docked to the station's Harmony node.

After the space shuttle Atlantis lands, the focus of the U.S. space program shifts to the International Space Station — so it’s fitting that NASA spacewalker Ron Garan took a moment to capture this eye-filling wide-angle view of the station at the end of this week’s final outing of the space shuttle era.

This wasn't the last spacewalk by any means. The 500-ton space station is as big as a football field and as roomy as a five-bedroom house, and it's going to need plenty of exterior upkeep over the next decade of operation. But it was the last opportunity for astronauts to take pictures of a space shuttle in outer space ... from outer space.

"Only one problem with this image — the tendency to make you stop whatever you're doing, stare at it, lose your concentration and drool uncontrollably," NBC News space analyst Jim Oberg says in an email. "At least that's how it affects me."

'Big deal' for space station science
It's also fitting that NASA has finally revealed how scientific experiments will be managed aboard the space station in the years ahead. Today the space agency announced it has selected a Florida-based nonprofit group known as the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, to take charge of research operations that use the U.S. portion of the space station as a national laboratory. The center will be located at the Space Life Sciences Laboratory, near NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

The U.S. segment of the space station was given national-lab status in 2005, and over the past few months, NASA has been evaluating potential partners for managing the lab operations. CASIS will be in charge of maximizing the station's research return for non-NASA applications — based on scientific peer review, analyses of the economic and technological value of potential projects, and the availability of funding. NASA said CASIS will also raise the station's profile as an educational platform.

The cooperative agreement initially will have a value of up to $15 million per year, NASA said in its news release.

"The space station is the centerpiece of NASA's human spaceflight activities, and it is truly an national asset," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was quoted as saying. "This agreement helps us ensure the station will be available for broad, meaningful and sustained use."

CASIS is a consortium of organizations spearheaded by Space Florida. "CASIS is a perfect fit with the state's strategy to support the space, science and technology industries through strategic collaboration and partnerships," Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, the chair of Space Florida's board of directors, said in a statement. "By making the space environment more widely accessible to industrial and academic research, the ISS National Lab will help strengthen and diversify the U.S. economy and inspire the next generation."

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who flew on the shuttle Columbia in 1986, said today's announcement was "a big deal."

"It's going to bring money, jobs and industry to diversify an area hard-hit by retirement of the shuttle program," Nelson said in a news release.

Breakthrough or multibillion-dollar bust?
The space station has long been criticized for providing less research value than scientists had hoped. We'll have to see if that criticism fades now that the station is out of its construction phase.

During a briefing conducted before Atlantis' launch, Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, said the initial goal was to devote 35 hours of the astronauts' time to research on a weekly basis, plus whatever they wanted to do during their off time. "We find that crews give quite a bit of their weekends to research," he said.

One of the space station's marquee science projects is a long-running investigation of how microgravity affects the virulence of pathogens such as the microbes that cause salmonella poisoning or MRSA. Scientists involved in the project, which could result in new vaccines, have an experiment aboard Atlantis for the last shuttle mission.

"We're close to some groundbreaking news here, so this could be a good one," Joe Delai, payload manager for Atlantis' STS-135 mission, told journalists.

It'd be nice if the post-shuttle era came to be remembered as a golden age for space station science — but what do you think? Is the station suited for science, or will it turn out to be a shiny $100 billion white elephant? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below. And while you're contemplating your comments, feast your eyes on these additional images from Tuesday's spacewalk:

NASA via Reuters

Spacewalker Ron Garan rides on the International Space Station's robotic arm as he transfers a failed pump module to the cargo bay of space shuttle Atlantis.

NASA via Getty Images

NASA spacewalker Mike Fossum takes a picture while attached to the International Space Station's robotic arm on Tuesday. California's Central Valley can be seen far below as a green swath running from left to right, with Mono Lake shining like a tiny blue jewel.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.