many of you may have looked up at the
night sky and wondered what is out there
in the vastness of space well one way to
find out is to go there and explore for
yourself today we're going to be joined
by one such explorer the musician
photographer and astronaut commander
Chris Hadfield Chris Hadfield is one of
the world's most accomplished and
seasoned - the gods who is the first
Canadian to walk in space he flew the
space shuttle twice and most recently
commanded the International Space
Station Chris has recently released a
book called you are here which is full
of hundreds of images taken of planet
Earth whilst he was onboard the
International Space Station these
photographs was taken of something very
large very far away but we think they
looked like pictures taken us something
quite small up close so we invited him
to see if he could recreate any of these
photos of the Earth from space be using
some textures from down here on planet
earth I think a lot of us grew up with
with the sense of the world to be like
this to be sort of smooth to be North up
and to have every country different
color and and to have a clear
understanding of the geography but not
much of an understanding of the geology
of the world that's that's sort of what
were brought up with but the actual
rawness of the world is so different in
the in the roughness and and the texture
of it the textures are so important so
that something that looks smooth and
unfeeling
is in fact it almost like art it's it's
so varied and the places where people
live we've left an imprint but so like
like the San Francisco Bay but so much
of the world is just raw nature like
across the Amazon or or across the
deserts or the mountains of the world
and being a person up there holding a
camera you are struck by the the stark
differences between what you grew up
with and
the world actually truly looks like
you're floating weightless with your
head down towards the world so you have
your toes curled around the hatch just
so it keeps your body stable like like I
don't know like a sloth or something out
there and you're holding on and you're
holding the camera and you're looking at
the world looking around you know and
the world goes by at eight kilometers a
second if you want a really good picture
of Bristol then you want to start
getting your camera ready over in Nova
Scotia in Canada because it's only gonna
be a few minutes before shoot here comes
Ireland and then you know there's
Ireland there's Cork okay there's
there's Dublin right there whoa look
just the whole Severn and aware the heck
is equesticle there's bad there's
various group there's London and it's
that kind of pace so the disadvantage is
the speed but it's the advantage too
because you get all of those shots of
Bristol and the surrounding area
but then before you can completely
capture it you're somewhere else and
when you come around the world the next
time overhead the lighting will be
different and the weather will be
different the season may have changed a
little so you get the beauty of a
constantly refreshed scene to take the
pictures of so if the speed I think is
both a plus and a minus
well let's slow things down a little bit
here and see if we can try and recreate
some of those textures and things that
we were talking about so we've got lots
of different things from paper we've got
all sorts of rocks and meteorites some
bits of metal and wood so if you're up
for it sure you have a camera yeah and
we can zoom in and see what we can try
and collect I want to do something
simple first and that is if you look
just south and east of the Sahara there
are some areas just on the edge of Saudi
Arabia where the the rawness of the
world is right at the surface you can
see where the the fumaroles and the
volcanoes erupted recently and there's
been almost no weathering of water there
to change the land and it looks a lot
like the roughness there and I think
with this light and the angle across
that level of roughness if even though
this is more like a a pumice sort of
lava
but if you if you get a close-up of that
I bet you it'll look a lot like the
pictures of Saudi Arabia let's go for
that okay
Oh beautiful look at that that's good
what was some of the most surprising
things you saw at one point I saw and
noctilucent clouds which were super
high-altitude clouds that are like a
hundred and twenty miles above the earth
and they're the tiniest traces of water
vapor up there but if you can catch the
Sun on the other side of the horizon
they come up and they reflect off those
clouds to you in orbit you can hardly
ever see them from the world but from a
spaceship once in a while you can see
that they they are beautiful they look
like light blue waves they look a little
bit like this stuff here actually they
look you get sort of this light Oh
actually if we do that right yeah that's
it here pull that sort of tight there
nice that's a good start there like that
a little bit of the noctilucent and
let's see the the orange of the Sahara
but it comes in wind rose especially if
you look in the empty quarter
so let's try and fold this so that we
get parallel rows like that pull it into
one focal plane if you can yeah I like
that
okay come in closer so on board a
spaceship someone could have asked me
you know so I'm over top of Bristol now
and could you please take a picture of
Bristol and then could you please take a
picture of Karachi and show me and show
me the difference here and they both are
at the sort of the end of a river and
there's a population there that's been
there for thousands of years and so
there's some parallels of how the two
are set up and it takes so little time
to come across and so it puts you in a
neat perspective to really see the world
let's take a picture of the background
of the Milky Way while we're here but
just make them make it big just hang it
down as a curtain
get a Milky Way picture Oh actually this
ends up looking more like Hawaii it's
nice I think what we should go for is
the edge of the world and the atmosphere
of it I think that that would be a great
shot here so we'll get the edge of the
world and the atmosphere above it and
all you have to do is hold the world
without making a shadow okay
consider yourself to some sort of
ancient god oh this is cool
we're looking like at at the very edge
of the Sahara but the blue behind or
maybe you know what this really looks
like it's the edge of the Sahara in the
Mediterranean right where you hit the
shoreline of the - looks far better than
it ought to what do you think the kind
of future for human exploration holds in
store for us well if you let me hold the
globe here what's what's going on now of
course because the space station goes
around and around the world it's it
doesn't go around the equator it's
actually tipped up about this high so it
goes around the world tipped from the
equator like like like that far so the
world we go around fast and then the
world slowly turns underneath us so we
get a different view every time which is
great
but we're only 400 kilometres above the
surface you know that so it's a really
good place to understand the planet and
a good place to test space equipment but
eventually we're gonna have to go away
from the world and I think if you take
the the whole way around the equator
here which is about 25,000 miles it's
only 400,000 all the way to the moon
right so you can not have to go all that
far to get all the way to the moan about
three days and I think we will go from
the space station going around and
around once it's taught us everything it
can about how to build spaceships and
how to safely live off the planet for
long times then we'll go to the moon and
I think we'll live on the moon for a few
generations sort of likely we currently
for the last hundred years have been
living in Antarctica we've learned how
to live in Antarctica over the last
hundred years I think we'll live on
for a few generations sorted out figure
it out invent the things learn about the
world learn about the universe learn
about the moon and then have made it
safe enough that maybe we want to take
off from the world and go all the way to
Mars but we've got some things to learn
between now and then for now this is a
pretty fascinated photographic
fascinating photographic subject
commander Hadfield it's been an honor
and a privilege thank you very much for
coming thank you thanks nice to talk
with you if you'd like to learn how to
start taking photos of the stars then
check out our beginners guide to Astro
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