Sunrise Earth

Brown bears wake from hibernation near Halo Bay in Katmai National Park, Alaska.

The sun jumps directly into the sky at the Tropic of Capricorn.

Venice, Italy Many have called this Old World maritime center the most beautiful city on earth. Millions visit each year, attracted by the image of a romantic sunset serenade on a gondola while dreamily floating down on the Grand Canal. Dawn offers its own distinctive window into this city's character, long before the gondolas awake. This episode departs from the fixed vantage points of past Sunrise Earth shows. For the first time, we take a voyage by slow-moving boat. We do our best to get lost within the 28 miles of the Venetian canal system. A mesmerizing passage into the Cannaregio district reveals the lesser-known beauty behind the city's famous glitz. Workboats slip under low bridges and their even lower hanging verdant plants. Cool yellows and pinks catch the morning sun and betray the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and some of the world's finest marble stonework. Window shutters are opened by sleepy-eyed Italians, startling the pigeons, which roost along the narrow waterways at night. We silently pass the sites where famous Venetians once awoke each day; such as the great Renaissance painter Tintoretto and the Orient explorer Marco Polo. Fishermen motor by, on their way to the open air market in the Rialto, with over 100 varieties of fish. Caught amidst the tension of the moving and the still, the beauty of Venice is sustained for another day.

The Svalbard group of islands in the Arctic Ocean about midway between Norway and the North Pole.

The Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu City.

Sunrise over Huahine includes a rainbow.

Scientists are interviewed as an examination of the sun and its impact on the Earth and its inhabitants.

The life-cycle of a solar eclipse and how it affects the world below.

The largest colony of Magellanic penguins in the world welcomes a new day near Punta Tomba, Argentina.

The center of the Incan empire, Machu Picchu in Peru, is shown as the sun rises on this city high in the Andes Mountains

Day breaks in a slice of red over the Southern Atlantic Ocean Península Valdés, Argentina and a colony of southern elephant seals and its new pups.

The sun rises on a port in Antalya, Turkey and the lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt.

The sun casts its light on a farming village in Aspendos, Turkey.

Morning exercises similar to Tai Chi in Elephant Trunk Park in Guilin, China.

Frogs, spiders, and birds wake to the morning sun on a terraced farm near PingAn, China. Take in the morning activities of the Dragon's Backbone, a stunning sixty-six square kilometers of crop terraces hand-cultivated by 800 farmers that snake up over a thousand feet of vertical altitude. These are marks of the Zhuang people.

The temples of Angkor in Cambodia are lit by the rising sun.

The moon sinks into the ocean in the Marino Las Baulas National Park in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

A wide variety of birds mingle in the Tempisque Basin of Costa Rica's Palo Verde National Park.

Perched in the dawn hours along the terminal moraine of Kenai Fjords National Park's largest tidewater glacier are blue icebergs flowing toward the sea. Scattered on the jet-black beach are other bergs broken under the pressure of a four-mile river of ice.

Fog envelopes Beluga Lake in Homer, Alaska, but dissipates as the sun rises and seaplanes take to the sky.

Western U.S. — Crossing the North American continent in a scant four hours, dawn settles on the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the coastal ranges and beaches of California before departing the western shore. We witness the geo-dramas of Yellowstone geysers, herds of horses and bison on the open range, the spectacular lighting of the Teton Range. Then in California, we see the massive sequoia, tule elk, a rainbow of wildflowers, the Yosemite Valley, and elephant seals on the beach. These are the great sunrise moments in nearly a dozen morning ecosystems of the west.

Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine — At 1,532 feet, this is the highest vantage point along the North Atlantic seaboard. During certain times of year, the summit receives the rays of the first rising sun within the United States. The pea, composed of pink granite, is perched above a forest of spruce and pitch pine. Among the granite slabs are tiny sub-alpine plants such as cinquefoil, squat, gnarled trees, wild blueberries and various sized boulders. The view of the Maine archipelago is unsurpassed, with the Cranberry Islands foremost in the southwest.

Schwabacher's Landing, Moose, Wyoming — The nocturnal beavers have settled into a small tributary under the sheer cirque walls, rugged ridges and jagged peaks of the Teton Range. Their engineering skill has produced an 8-foot high dam and a new pond for those creatures of the day: a great blue heron fishing in the morning mist, ducks with their ducklings, trout, and a goldfinch feeding her chick. We witness these two communities as they pass each other during the crossroad of dawn.

Watch Tule elk at sunrise in the Tule Elk Preserve in California.

The Triangle X Ranch in Moose, Wyoming welcomes the new day as horses graze in the pasture and geese pass overhead.

Elephant seals crawl up the beach at California's Point Reyes National Seashore to soak up the first drops of sunshine at this seal colony at Chimney Point, California. Elephant seals play in the water after a hunt, and tule elk wander in a meadow.

Early morning on the Penobscot River in Maine.

Sunrise over a sea cave full of young anemones and coralline algae.

Alewives make the dangerous trek from the freshwater lakes of New England to the Atlantic Ocean.

A colony of terns watches the sun rise in the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge in Chatham, Massachusetts. This is the second-largest colony of terns on the Atlantic coast, with over 17,000 birds

Alligators, egrets, wood storks and ravens enjoy the first rays of sunshine from a gator hole in the Everglades National Park.

The sun rises as moose graze in Kidney Pond in Maine, under the shadow of the 4,000 ft. peak of Katahdin Mountain