Astronaut's sublime Earth photo is surely one of his best yet
NASA astronaut Don Pettit has been back on terra firma for almost two months and he's still able to dig out some awesome photos that he took during his half-a-year stay on the International Space Station (ISS).
Pettit's latest image, posted for the first time on X on Sunday, shows the lights of cities and fishing fleets across southeast Asia, an atmospheric glow, the Milky Way, and part of the station itself as it orbited Earth 250 miles up.
The city lights of Southeast Asia beneath the Milky Way.
Vibrant colors of LED cities, orange atmospheric airglow, and fishing fleets are blurred by my sidereal drive, while tracking stars as fixed points in space. pic.twitter.com/C98QQecx6q — Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) June 16, 2025
The dramatic blur is caused by the extended exposure time and the motion of the orbital outpost, which is traveling through space at a speed of about 17,500 mph. The distant stars, however, remain sharp due to the use of a sidereal drive, a device that works by moving the camera at the same speed as the stars appear to move, thereby eliminating their movement within the frame.
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During his recent stint aboard the space station, Pettit dazzled his many follows on X and Instagram with impressive photos and video of Earth and beyond. Check out this page where you can find some of his best work.
Pettit has spoken previously about how the cameras are set up on the ISS to give astronauts the best chance of capturing an image when something catches their eye.
'Generally speaking, we don't turn any of the cameras off,' he told Time magazine. 'We don't put lens caps on. The cameras that are staged next to the window [of the cupola] are just set up, ready to go.
'And we'll have one camera with a 200 millimeter telephoto lens, and another camera with a 14 millimeter wide angle lens, and we'll have three or four cameras set up in between, because when you're taking pictures you don't have time to change lenses. So you just grab one camera, go click click click, set it down, grab another camera, click click click, grab another camera, click click click. And there's your 10-second window to get a picture of your hometown or the Pyramids.'
Now aged 70, it's not yet clear if NASA's oldest serving astronaut will return to orbit, but happily for his fans, it seems that he's still got plenty of new content that he's eager to share.
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