EARTH'S SPACE ORBIT - DEC 31, 2011 (Ungraded): Western Africa to Northern Kazakhstan. Time lapse from unaltered photos taken by astronauts. HighRes NASA JPEGs muxed into PhotoJPEG video without re-encoding and post-processing. This clip retains 100% of original image quality including camera artifacts. ISS flying in Earth's orbit from northwest Africa, near Western Sahara, to northern Kazakhstan. The pass begins looking back from the ISS along the northwestern coast of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. As the ISS tracks northeast, the Canary Islands can be seen just off the coast of Western Sahara and Morocco. As the ISS continues northeast, it passes over the northern half of the Italian Peninsula before continuing over the snow-covered Balkan Peninsula. The pass ends as it continues east-northeast, but much of the ground is covered with snow. (av21973u)

NASA Johnson Space Center