How amazing is this planet of ours?

The GIF above shows one year of seasonal transformations on Earth, using images from NASA's Visible Earth team.

The building and receding ice is all part of the natural change of seasons, of course, but when it's animated this way it starts to look like the planet is breathing in and out. Or like a beating heart.

Data visualization expert, cartographer and designer John Nelson created the animation, and he writes on his blog that even he was kind of surprised at how the data came together.

"I of course had some expectation of what I would see as a result of animating these frames," he writes. "But I didn't expect to be so mesmerized by them. I can't look away."

Neither can we.

Via Colossal

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