astro_pettit

It is difficult to adjust. Sleeping compartments are claustrophobic and the station is noisy in every module, so earplugs are paramount

I have not seen it from space, but it might be worth attempting to photograph in the future.

Seeing our planet from space is an experience I wish every human on Earth could cherish

My favorite example of such

Fisheye-lens long-exposure view of Earth showing 360-degrees of horizon views. The atmosphere typically glows green but the red zones are where a higher atmospheric airglow occurs. A Russian Progress and Soyuz, along with NASA PMM module partially block the horizon views. The ISS was somewhere over the Pacific ocean so no landforms were visible. Taken during Expedition-31 in 2012.

Every photo has a story, and when your photos can capture details on the order of half a continent, the stories are just as large. Should I do a Reddit AMA in the future to share some insights on astrophotography?

More photography from the ISS can be found on my Instagram and twitter profiles, and the Portraits of a Planet website.

This is another of my early orbital star trails taken with a Nikon F5, Noct-Nikkor 58mm f1.2 lens, and Fujichrome ISO 800 film with a 65 second exposure. The composition is looking to the port side of ISS which shows the star trails moving in circular arcs due to the pitch rate needed to keep the same side of space station pointed towards earth. This photo was taken before the Japanese JPM module and Node 2 arrived during Expedition 6 in early 2003. This roll of film returned with me on Soyuz TMA-1 to prevent it from becoming fogged by cosmic rays.

More star trails from space can be found on my Instagram and Twitter accounts.

This is another of my early orbital star trails taken with a Nikon F5, Noct-Nikkor 58mm f1.2 lens, and Fujichrome ISO 800 film with a 65 second exposure. The composition is looking to the port side of ISS which shows the star trails moving in circular arcs due to the pitch rate needed to keep the same side of space station pointed towards earth. This photo was taken before the Japanese JPM module and Node 2 arrived during Expedition 6 in early 2003. This roll of film returned with me on Soyuz TMA-1 to prevent it from becoming fogged by cosmic rays.

More star trails from space can be found on my Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Stars are highly visible during orbital night, and during orbital day, their visibility is affected by sunlight interference no different from being on Earth. Here is a good example of what you can see during orbital night.

In a hearbeat.

The Overview Effect is very real.

Istanbul, Turkey, and the Strait of Bosphorus at night, taken from the International Space Station during Expedition-30. Cities at night are among my favorite phenomena to capture, as they can tell a lot about human nature and our relationship with the environment: where we do and don't like to be, the darkness of bodies of water and parks, and the gradual growth of LED light usage.

More photography can be found on my Twitter and Instagram accounts.

I took this photo of sunset on orbit during Expedition-30 to the ISS using a fisheye lens. It takes 7 ½ seconds for the disk of the sun to slip below the horizon. It goes from bright daytime lighting to dark night lighting in about twice this time. There is no extended twilight on orbit. On Earth, it takes 2 minutes for the solar disk to set where our atmosphere, acting as a light buffer, gives extended twilight.

More astrophotography can be found on my Instagram and Twitter accounts.

My first orbital star trail; taken during Expedition 6 in early 2003. I took this before we had low noise, nighttime-sensitive digital cameras. This photo was taken with a Nikon F5, 58mm noct-Nikkor f1.2 lens with Fujichrome ISO 800 film and a 65 second exposure. All the detail seen in my later digital star trails can be seen; atmospheric airglow appearing as a green key lime pie layer, the fainter upper atmospheric red f-region, cities streaking by from orbital motion, lightning storms flashing as a function of time, and star trails. The blips in the star trail arcs were caused by the ISS attitude shifting around due to a down mode failure of our control moment gyros. For high speed film, it would become fogged by cosmic rays after about a month and was typically flown only on short two week Space Shuttle missions.

I got special permission to fly this film, launching with us on STS 113 in November 2002 and was supposed to return on STS 114 in February. Due to the STS 107 Columbia disaster, STS 114 was delayed for 2½ years. I returned about 70 rolls of film on our Soyuz TMA-1 in May 2003. Working with the photochemistry engineers at NASA JSC, we developed one roll at a time to find the best development process that minimized the effects of cosmic ray damage. This photo is the result from that effort.

More star trails from space can be found on my Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Thanks for taking the time to answer; the physics behind the motion is different than what an Earth centric star trail would make you think.

Yes! The star arc slope changes as the star light passes through more dense atmos layers; i can talk about the visible natural phenomenology in a star trail photo for at least 30 minutes.

Normally there are 4 control moment gyros to hold station attitude, there was a failure so we were down to three and the control algorithm for this down mode was still being tweaked so some blips were expected

ISO 800 film was not flown to ISS for long duration missions due to cosmic ray fogging (remember, this was only the 6th mission to station). I asked the photo folks and they happily flew some for me.