From over 35,000 kilometers away, Russian weather satellite Elektro-L 1 has been capturing super high resolution images of Earth. James Drake blended these images from the NTs OMZ to create a series of crisp HD time-lapse videos. Drake blogs about space at Infinity Imagined and was one of the first, if not the first, YouTube user to create a time-lapse video from the International Space Station's photographs of Earth from orbit. The Elektro-L videos are an HD resolution of 1080p, but you can explore the still images in all their 121-megapixel glory via Drake's site dedicated to the project.

Elektro-L is a geostationary satellite, Drake explains in the description of this time-lapse video of the full sphere of Earth below:

It creates a 121 megapixel image every 30 minutes with four visible and infrared light wavelengths. The infra-red was originally orange but I have changed it to green. The images are "masked" by a circular barrier that blocks out the light of the Sun and other stars. This is to prevent damage to the camera by exposure to direct sunlight. The images have been interpolated (blended) to create a smooth animation.

For more videos by James Drake, visit Infinity Imagined. For more information about NTs OMZ, the Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring, see http://eng.ntsomz.ru/.

Thanks to Paul Severin for the video.