Photo by Erik Kulu from the ESTCube-1 team

Estonia from space won Regio special prize at Estonian Scientific Photo Contest 2015. Explanation from the author:
This springtime panorama is the best image of Estonia (out of only a few) taken by the first and only Estonian satellite ESTCube-1. It is made even more special due to almost complete lack of clouds which had to match with good orbit.

trajectory (1-2 twice per week) to get the almost straight down view. Other scientific activities and electrical energy were also limiting factors.

Photographing with a satellite is very different compared to modern digital cameras where you have viewfinder and can see the result and try again immediately. Clouds are very bright from space compared to ground and high dynamic range imaging would be also needed to have both with good exposure. Also ESTCube-1 could only save up to 4 images in one go.

The three photos took almost 3 days to download. Each image is 10-bit uncompressed and about 380 KB in size and has 640x480 resolution.

Taken at 13:01:40 on 28 April 2014.