I’m going to be posting a bit less frequently for the next couple of weeks until September 1 – not going away, just not here quite as often. Champagnewhisky is putting its feet up for summer.

Here are some images of our planet’s life pulse, the advance and retreat of the seasons across the hemispheres. John Nelson downloaded 12 cloud-free Earth images for 2004, one for each month, from the Nasa Visible Earth, stitched them together, and created moving mosaics of the Earth’s cycles. It’s worth heading over to Nelson’s own description of how and why he made this project – funny, insightful and well-written, with lots of cool links.

Breathing Earth from above
Source: John Nelson / NASA Visible Earth

The movement of ice and the annual ebb and flow of vegetation is hypnotic, and now I want more. I want to see various years placed next to one another, to compare and contrast. I want animated ocean images of hurricane seasons and calm doldrums. I want a moveable feast of the ocean’s great currents, laid out in front of me.

Breathing Earth – Various views
Source: John Nelson / NASA Visible Earth

Nelson says the images look to him like the Earth is breathing – for me it looks like a tidal flow, but the essence is the same: The Earth has life cycles, just like the rest of us.