A beautiful picture captured by a current arrival on the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) exhibits the night time lights of London gleaming from 250 miles up.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit — at 69 NASA’s oldest lively astronaut — arrived on the station final week on his fourth journey to orbit.
“London glowing at night time,” Pettit wrote in a put up with the photograph, which he shared on X (previously Twitter) on Wednesday.
London glowing at night time.
Nikon Z9, 200mm f2, 1/320 sec, ISO 25600 pic.twitter.com/okPZz6N05f
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) September 18, 2024
Pettit used a full-frame Nikon Z9 to take the photograph. The focal size was 200mm, the aperture f2, velocity 1/320 sec, and ISO 25600.
Only a few days after arriving on the ISS, Pettit took an extraordinary photo exhibiting the Polaris Daybreak spacecraft coming into Earth’s environment at excessive velocity because it returned dwelling with 4 astronauts on the finish of a historic five-day mission.
The American astronaut captured equally putting photographs throughout his earlier visits to the ISS, and so his social media followers can anticipate to see loads extra fantastic photographs over the course of his six-month house mission.
Pettit is especially adept at capturing dramatic star path pictures, like this one taken in 2012 with a Nikon D3s utilizing a 24mm lens and created utilizing a number of stacked 30-second exposures:
Star path from @Space_Station, with ghostly blue define of a photo voltaic panel.
A number of atmospheric layers are seen attributable to photo voltaic pushed excitation of atomic oxygen (inexperienced) and hydroxyl (-OH) radicals (orange-pink). The star trails turn into curved close to the horizon as a result of… pic.twitter.com/F9HUVcEf9e
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) July 19, 2024
He additionally likes to take near-infrared pictures, like this one captured in 2012 exhibiting a flora-packed river delta (proven in vibrant magenta) wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. This picture was taken utilizing a modified Nikon D3s with a 180mm lens set at f/4.5 and ISO 400.
Camana, Peru area in close to infrared. Wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains, this lush flora-packed river delta seems as vibrant magenta. Camana is the grayish function within the decrease heart of the river delta. That is in stark distinction to the sparse foliage in… pic.twitter.com/zXu6Gor1MF
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) September 1, 2024
Whereas most astronauts are blissful to easily peer out of the ISS on the beautiful surroundings a number of hundred miles under, a couple of, similar to Pettit, Matthew Dominick, and Thomas Pesquet, prefer to file what they see with a digital camera. And we’re mighty glad they do.
