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Earth's atmosphere

Atmospheric gases scatter blue wavelengths of visible light more than other wavelengths, giving the Earth’s visible edge a blue halo. At higher and higher altitudes, the atmosphere becomes so thin that it essentially ceases to exist. Gradually, the atmospheric halo fades into the blackness of space.
Reason
A beautiful high resolution phograph that illustrates Earth's atmosphere very well. Some image noise and minor compression artifacts are visible in the dark areas but I don't this is a very big problem.
Articles this image appears in
Atmosphere, Earth's atmosphere, Kármán line
Creator
NASA
Nominator
KFP ( talk | contribs)
  • Support — KFP ( talk | contribs) 21:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support A great shot, very illustrative- although perhaps somewhat uninformative. It is a pity that the sky has so much noise. Also, the horizon is tilted. Jellocube27 23:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Weak oppose - I'm not sure what this image represents, but it is not for sure the top of the atmosphere, whatever the way we define it (the air density decreases exponentially with height). The "normal" clouds may extend from near the surface to the tropopause (the top of the troposphere), which is about 10 km high. At heights of about 80 km, the top of the stratosphere, the air is barely dense enough to scatter light to a visible degree. However, the atmosphere extends much higher than that, with measurable effects (like the auroras, which may occur at 1000 km). The question is: if, in the present picture, the cloud tops are 10 km high, what is the altitude of that line separating the blue from the black: 20, 30 km? But it is a beatiful image though the quality could be much better. - Alvesgaspar 00:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC) reply
The naming of this image as "The Top of the Atmosphere" on NASA's site is apparently based on the Kármán line which "is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space." According to [1], this photograph was taken from an altitude of 335 kilometres. -- KFP ( talk | contribs) 00:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Weak support Alvesgaspar, see accompanying text at [2]. I like the faint moon in the picture (should be noted in the caption though, at first I thought it might be a reflection). I don't have much problem with the noise or the tilt, but the color gradation gets a bit stripey in the mid-resolution version. ~ trialsanderrors 01:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment – Using simple geometric reasoning, and based on the apparent curvature of the Earth in the photo, I have made a gross estimation of the scale of the image, which is of the order of 1:300 000 (this is a lower estimation, the true figure might be 1:150 000 or even more). This means that the height above the clouds of that line separating the blue from the black is of the order of 10-20 km (12 km according to my calculations), very far from the Karman line’s 100 km. Anyone interested in making a better estimate? - Alvesgaspar 10:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I don't see a sourced claim that this is the Kármán line. Are you saying that the image incorrectly presents the gradual color change in the atmosphere, and the fade into blackness should occur at higher altitudes? I don't see any argument in the accompanying text that the atmosphere ends where the picture turns black. We should be careful when writing our captions for the image not to imply this, but for the most part the image visually represents the gradual thinning of the atmosphere. ~ trialsanderrors 16:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support Photographically, it's as good a picture as I've seen of the upper atmosphere. KFP has given us a good overview of the source's information, and it seems to portray the facts well, even if Wikipedia's editors can't agree on what they're seeing (I'll take NASA's word on the altitude over "a gross estimation of the scale of the image.") The composition is excellent, and it relates well to encyclopedic content. - Harmil 21:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support Good upper atmosphere picture. - M&NCenarius 22:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support - A very nice picture - Booksworm Talk to me! 15:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support -Very good - Nelro 15:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support Very interesting picture. - Wutschwlllm 13:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Support. Wonderful image. └ Jared┘┌ talk┐  17:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC) reply

Promoted Image:Top of Atmosphere.jpg -- KFP ( talk | contribs) 12:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC) reply

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