Our moody sun is spitting out flares and gifting Earth with spectacular auroras. Observers on the ground are enjoying the light show, but astronauts on the International Space Station are getting a special treat from orbit. NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick shared a glimmering timelapse of the moon setting into a red and green aurora.
Dominick posted the video to X on August 12. Parts of the ISS are visible in the video along with a docked Russian Soyuz capsule. The capsule is bathed in blue light as a sunrise follows the moonset. The ISS moves fast. Astronauts on board can witness 16 sunrises and sunsets each day. That also means they get to enjoy many moonrises and moonsets. In the timelapse, the moon looks like a glowing dot dropping toward Earth.
Dominick is a proud photography fanatic. He’s shared multiple images of bright aurora dancing through the atmosphere. “The aurora have been amazing the past few days,” Dominick tweeted. “Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus.” Cygnus is a cargo ship that delivered 8,200 pounds of supplies, including new camera lenses, to the ISS on August 6.
There’s a long history of expert photographers on the ISS and Dominick fits right into that lineage. He launched to the ISS on March 3 as commander of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission. He’s scheduled for a six-month stay in space.
Dominick is giving space fans a peek behind the scenes at how he handles his photography work in microgravity. The timelapse video is oriented with Earth at the bottom of the frame. That makes visual sense for us Earth dwellers, but it’s not how the ISS astronauts experience the view. In a series of tweets on August 11, Dominick showed how he sees Earth oriented above him when he’s looking out the window.
Two versions of the same aurora image show how it looks with Earth up and with Earth down. The shots were taken from the cupola, a multi-window lookout spot on the ISS where astronauts can observe the planet. “I normally rotate the images 180 degrees before posting them online since that appears more natural if you haven’t been hanging out in the cupola,” Dominick tweeted. “I guess I forgot this time perhaps because I have grown accustomed to the ‘upside down’ orientation.”
The sun has been incredibly active, blasting out flares and coronal mass ejections—large expulsions of solar material. “Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts,” NASA warned in a notification about an intense solar flare on August 8. Flares can cause problems, but they can also bring about the scenic auroras that star in Dominick’s photographs and timelapses.
If you can’t get enough ISS views, then check out NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, a portal that lets you explore, search for and download images captured by astronauts. Or you can just follow Dominick’s photographic adventures and see the world through the eyes of a space dweller with a knack for cameras.
