NASA Astronauts Film Stunning Footage of a Glowing Green Aurora From Space
In the early hours of February 26, 2023, Nicole Mann (@astro_duke_mann) was soaking in the nighttime view of Earth from the cupola of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting around 254 miles away. The scene that the windows presented before her eyes was something out of a fairytale. She yelled out in excitement to call her fellow astronaut, Josh Cassada (@astro_cassada), to enjoy the starry spectacle. Despite the sun rising, the spectacle left them giddy with a fathomless gradient of deep reds, oranges, blues, and greens.
While the ISS swept above North America, Mann and Cassada utilized the mirrorless Nikon D5 cameras attached for Crew Earth Observations (CEO) to snap several stunning shots of the spectacle. The footage has left millions of viewers stunned on social media. It displays a bewitching dance of auroral lights decorating the dark, cosmic abyss. "Orbital glow," NASA stated, describing the sight on Instagram.
ISS orbits over 75% of the Earth's surface, which gives astronauts aboard an opportunity to grab a 360-degree view of the various phenomena unfolding below. This auroral spectacle was filmed during NASA's Expedition 68, which involved Crew-5 astronauts who flew to space in SpaceX's Dragon Endurance on October 5, 2022. Apart from Cassada, the pilot, and Mann, the Commander, the crew included Japanese astronaut JAXA Mission Specialist Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos Mission Specialist Anna Kikina.
Carrying these crew members, Dragon lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in October 2022 and splashed down off the Florida coast on March 11, 2023, as per NASA. During their 157-day stay on the space station, the astronauts conducted an array of interesting experiments, including bioprinting human organs in microgravity, growing dwarf tomatoes, investigating liquid behavior, understanding fuel systems on the moon, examining the human cardiovascular system's behavior in space, and also conducting space walks to install new roll-out solar arrays. This footage was captured just before the orbital sunrise. This was the time, Space.com explains, when the solar activity was at its peak.
The hole or the corona in the sun blasted fiery streams of charged particles as coronal mass ejections that crashed into the molecules on earth. Excited by the intense energy, the molecules became supercharged and started emitting colorful curtains of light on both February 26 and February 27. While the same aurora, a.k.a. Northern Lights, was captured by countless viewers on Earth, this video shows it from a different perspective, one from space. The video opens to reveal a postcard of Earth as seen from a window in the space station's cupola. In one corner appear solar panels, their silhouettes glinting golden with all the starry light. The view seen through the window is composed of several layers, the bottom one mimicking the earth in dark maroon. Above this layer is a necklace of neon green, glowing bright and lustrous. Topping this layer appears a vast ocean of cool gradients painted in bluish greens and deep midnight blues.
As the orbiting laboratory moves in its orbit, the gradient changes from beautiful blues to glaring greens. Curtains of vivid greens pulse with wildness, remaining blanketed with glittery speckles of starlit particles as a reservoir of sparkle dances in the cosmic blue-green lagoon. "Absolutely unreal," Cassada exclaimed in the caption of a snapshot he shared on X. The tweet, dated February 28, 2023, was viewed by more than four million people and continues to attract attention.
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