ISS Time-Lapse VIDEO Shows 'Best View In The Solar System'

The spectacular high-resolution photos and video that have been beamed down from the International Space Station (ISS) in recent months have become an internet staple.

And it's not just NASA's doing. The videos go straight to the public domain, where creative minds like MIT student and photographer Alex Rivest are free to tweak and recombine them.

Rivest, who gave us "The Stars as Viewed from the International Space Station," in March, used a similar approach to create his newest video, which he calls "The Best View in the Solar System."

The earlier piece focused on stars. This one casts an eye mostly at the Earth.

From the sparse clouds that frame the Persian Gulf to the Himalayas' icy footprint, you can see much of our world through the ISS viewing window. On the Vimeo page for the piece, which went up Aprile 12, Rivest wrote,

"Exactly 51 years ago today, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit earth. Today, man-kind has the International Space Station, which has continually been inhabited by humans since the November 2, 2000.

These lucky explorers and scientists clearly have the best view in the solar system."