A NASA astronaut on board the ISS has recently been busy snapping the Northern Lights in various locations around the globe. Be it at sunrise over the US coast, or in the dead of night above central Russia, the images are stunning.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore, US astronaut on the International Space
Station, also managed to capture the lights of Aurora Borealis
dancing dazzlingly over central Russia’s snowy landscape between
Moscow and St. Petersburg.
A photo posted by International Space Station (@iss) on Feb 7,
2015 at 9:30am PST
Earlier this week, NASA revealed an incredible video clip that
shows how the sun rising over the northeast coast of the US as it
met the polar light show. Wilmore made the video over Virginia,
Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, and it was
posted with a caption: “All we need now are angels singing”.
Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights, is nature’s spectacular
show usually seen in the skies near the magnetic poles, in the
Arctic and Antarctic regions. Its dancing lights are an effect of
particles from the sun triggering reactions in the Earth’s upper
atmosphere, when photons of light are released by oxygen and
nitrogen molecules.
A photo posted by International Space Station (@iss) on Feb 4,
2015 at 12:44pm PST
The International Space Station, which can be partly seen on the
video, captured by NASA, is currently home to six astronauts,
three Russians among them.