Over his three earlier missions to the Worldwide House Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Don Pettit earned a repute for having a eager eye in the case of photographing Earth and past.
Since arriving on the ISS on his fourth orbital mission earlier this month, Pettit, who at 69 is NASA’s oldest lively astronaut, has wasted little time in grabbing the station’s cameras to seize and share contemporary dazzling imagery shot from 250 miles above Earth.
In his newest work posted on X (previously Twitter) on Tuesday, Pettit shared some elegant and extremely inventive pictures exhibiting moonlight reflecting off of places within the Amazon basin in South America.
“Someplace over the Amazon basin, capturing images of cities at night time, I observed the sunshine from a near-full moon reflecting off of the meandering rainforest rivers,” Pettit wrote within the put up, describing how the waterwaays appeared as “flowing silver snakes” and “glowing golden claws.”
Moonshine from area. Someplace over the Amazon basin, capturing images of cities at night time, I observed the sunshine from a near-full moon reflecting off of the meandering rainforest rivers. Within the cool moon-ish gentle these rivers turned flowing silver snakes. When the moonlight was… pic.twitter.com/SGIUAJLhpP
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) September 24, 2024
As standard, Pettit shared particulars of the gear and digicam settings that he used to seize the pictures. On this case, he used a full-frame Nikon Z9 physique with a 200mm lens set at f/2 and a velocity of 1/320 sec, whereas the ISO was set at 25600. Pettit added that he processed the pictures in Photoshop earlier than sharing them.
Whereas Pettit can also be engaged on science analysis aboard the ISS together with all the different astronauts there, he additionally loves to move to the station’s seven-window Cupola module to seize extraordinary views of Earth utilizing the Nikon Z9. Only in the near past, he shared a placing shot of London at night time, and, in one other outstanding picture, he managed to seize the Polaris Daybreak Crew Dragon capsule because it entered Earth’s ambiance at excessive velocity on the finish of a historic five-day mission.
Pettit will probably be in orbit till March 2025 — ample time to create extra artworks from area.