Big Pictures From Russia... In Color!

Today's Big Picture features 34 stunning color photos from from Russia a century ago.

...Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.

The colors are truly breath-taking and vivid. This is a priceless treasure. From Space Weather, another colorful photo today that blew me away was taken from the ISS. Click the pic for glorious full-size.