Astronaut Captures North America Whizzing Past and Auroras on the Horizon

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Astronaut Captures North America Whizzing Past and Auroras on the Horizon

A long-exposure image taken from the International Space Station shows the Earth at night with vibrant streaks of aurora borealis in green and red. The blurred lights of cities contrast against the dark expanse of space.
The ISS soars above Lake Michigan. | Photograph by Don Pettit

Astronaut Don Pettit has captured a wonderful, long-exposure photo of North America streaking below his vantage spot 257 miles above the Earth’s surface on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Pettit took the photo on October 24 and it has been uploaded to the NASA Johnson Flickr page.

In fact, NASA Johnson uploaded two photos to Flickr; one was taken above Lake Michigan and the other above northern Mexico. In both photos, the aurora, or northern lights, can be glimpsed on the horizon. Space explains that these glowing green lights appear when energetic particles ejected from the Sun interacts with Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Pettit is a fantastic photographer and keen observers of his work may recognize that these recent photos are similar to one of his most famous pictures, Lightning Bugs.

Lightning Bugs by Don Pettit

Lightning Bugs was taken in 2012 when Pettit was onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on Expedition 30. The photo shows “huge thunderstorms pounding Earth.”

“This is a 15-minute time exposure made by stacking 1-minute single exposures. I used a Nikon D3s, ISO 800, 24mm lens at f/5.6,” Pettit explained on Reddit a couple of years ago.

But that was 2012 and now in 2024 NASA astronauts onboard the ISS have access to Nikon Z9s as well as 15 FTZ II adapters, and more than 15 Nikkor Z lenses (including super-telephoto and macro lenses).

A stunning long-exposure photograph from space shows the Earth with vibrant, streaked lights across its surface. The curvature of the planet is visible against a dark, starry background, with part of a spacecraft in view.
Flying above Mexico.

Pettit is currently on Expedition 71/72 and at age 69, he is NASA’s oldest active astronaut. He is also an accomplished photographer and recently went to the ISS’s cupola for an interview alongside Matthew Dominick and talked about what it’s like shooting photos while in space.

On the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel, Pettit talked about his quest to capture a red sprite from above. A sprite is a large-scale electrical discharges that shoot upward from thunderstorm clouds that are red in color.

The astronaut-cum-photographer is hoping to get a nadir view of a sprite which would be utterly fascinating and a world’s first so watch this space.

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