The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. The image was taken by the Expedition 25 crew. Downtown Houston from Space Station AlphaĪstronaut photograph ISS025-E-8532 was acquired on October 5, 2010, with a Nikon D3X digital camera using an effective 1000 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center.Additional astronaut photographs of the Houston metropolitan area.Traditional short lens photography is easier because it does not require motion compensation. The technique involves bracing yourself against the space station bulkhead to prevent movement related to weightlessness. Active ISS motion compensation is also important the astronaut must pan the camera by hand at just the right rate, keeping the object at the same point in the viewfinder. Such high resolution was made possible by using lens â€œdoublersâ€ to increase the optical magnification of camera lenses. This subset of a handheld digital camera image has a spatial resolution of 2 to 3 meters per pixel (or picture element), making it one of the highest spatial resolution images ever obtained from the International Space Station (ISS). A forested area (dark green, lower left) is located less than two kilometers from the parking lots. Around Reliant Park you can find large asphalt parking lots, vacant lots with a mixture of grass and exposed topsoil, and both single- and multi-family residential areas. (Other forms of regulation play a similar role here.) This leads to highly mixed land use within the city. metropolitan areas for its lack of formal zoning ordinances. Houston is home to the NASA Johnson Space Center and is notable among major U.S. It was the first American football stadium built with a retractable roof (shown here in its retracted position). Reliant Stadium was built in 2002 to host the Houston Texans, a National Football League team. The structure is no longer used for major sporting events, and proposals have been made for renovating and repurposing it. Built in 1965, the Astrodome was the world’s first fully enclosed, domed sports stadium. Reliant Park includes two large sports complexes: Reliant Stadium and Reliant Astrodome.

This astronaut photograph highlights the Reliant Park area of Houston’s â€œinner loop,â€ the part of the city located within Interstate Highway 610.

Observatory houston