Milky Way Galaxy, Airglow, Aurora & Sunrise | International Space Station

Milky Way Galaxy, Airglow, Aurora & Sunrise | International Space Station

NASA Astronaut Matthew Dominick: "A timelapse of solar arrays reflecting aurora and city lights as they align themselves for the impending sunrise."

"The solar array light reflections were so mind blowing that I stayed up till 1AM to shoot a few more sunrises. Luckily, we get sunrises every 90 minutes."

"One of the techniques I have learned over the past few months to get great still photos is to setup lots of timelapses to find great lighting. With a timelapse the camera takes a RAW photo on a time interval that is typically every 0.5s and saves the image. Our camera has an option to automatically create a video from the sequence of images. We then watch the video afterwards to find what part of the of the orbit amongst thousands of individual images has the best lighting or subject matter to either go back later to the same part of an orbit and take a still image or pull the still image saved from the timelapse process."

"Yesterday the Moon was not up during the night portions of our orbits so I knew I had a shot at getting the Milky Way core and some aurora. The timelapse was setup in a module we call МИМ2. It has a great view of the service module solar arrays. There are were so many great still shots in the timelapse series but the ”dance” the solar arrays do reflecting aurora and city lights is so cool to see with a timelapse video.  A still image does not fully capture it."

Technical details: 1.6s, 15mm, T1.8, ISO 6400, 2s intervals. Exposure and a few items adjusted on a few hundred individual frames simultaneously before making a 15fps timelapse.

Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light—called a photon—in order to relax again. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day solar radiation. Airglow can be red, green, purple and yellow swaths of light emanating from the Earth's upper atmosphere. In this video, it is green.

Expedition 71 Updates:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 71 Crew

Station Commander: Oleg Kononenko (Russia)

Roscosmos (Russia): Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin (Russia)

NASA: Tracy Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barrett, Jeanette Epps

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Video Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/M. Dominick

Duration: 26 seconds

Release Date: Sept. 1, 2024

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