Earth looks like a disco ball from the International Space Station (ISS), as shown in gorgeous time-lapse photography taken by NASA astronaut Christina Koch.
The composite image above was made from over 400 individual photos snapped over a span of approximately 11 minutes as the orbiting laboratory traveled from Namibia to the Red Sea. ISS astronauts may spot many types of light during a night orbit, including artificial and natural light sources, lightning, and burning fires.
Stationary features, including bustling cities, look like pale yellow-white dotted streaks. Each yellow-white dot marks another frame captured and in the image above, they appear in a bright line formation.
Darker orange-hued dotted lines depict wildfires across parts of Africa, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They appear close to the yellow-white dot marks that represent cities on our planet.
A trail of night lights! ✨✨✨ This image compiles time-lapse photos taken by @astro_christina from the @Space_Station as it traveled from Namibia toward the Red Sea. Many darker orange lines are seasonal fires; northward, you can spot lightning. More: https://t.co/LpEFvll3ya pic.twitter.com/GKhH4nwLX4
— NASA (@NASA) October 23, 2019
Weather also isn’t camera shy: Thunderstorms move across parts of central Africa, with illuminated white lightning flashes captured in the compiled frames. The lightning looks like it’s outlining the shape of Earth, as a faint green-yellow color (airglow, also known as a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere) outlines the upper atmosphere.
NASA says the most striking features of the image are the “star trails” surrounding the background in the upper left corner. The point they’re encircling is perpendicular to the ISS orbital plane and any stars close to this perpendicular vector look like they’re not moving during the time-lapse sequence, while stars that are farther away from this spot trace out big circles as the orbiting laboratory rotates in space.
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