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What Israel Looks Like From Space

International Space Station posts photographs of the Holy Land

by
Stephanie Butnick
December 29, 2014
Photograph of Israel taken from the International Space Station on December 25, 2014. (NASA/Barry Wilmore)
Photograph of Israel taken from the International Space Station on December 25, 2014. (NASA/Barry Wilmore)

“Israel – completely clear – on Christmas morning from the International Space Station. Astronaut Barry Wilmore woke up early on Christmas to reflect upon the beauty of the Earth and snap some images to share with the world,” reads a post on the International Space Station’s Facebook page. The photos are among many captivating images Wilmore has captured from space that have been posted to the page.

The post, perhaps not surprisingly, has garnered a great deal of discussion among Facebook users about the region’s geopolitical realities, which aren’t conveyed in the vast, zoomed-out image, as well as geological issues like the region’s water crisis, which are in fact visible.

You can see the rest of Wilmore’s photographs of Israel from space here.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.