Cosmic & Earth Orbital Colors | International Space Station

Cosmic & Earth Orbital Colors | International Space Station

"Auroras above Andromeda Galaxy"

"The city lights of Southeast Asia beneath the Milky Way. 

Vibrant colors of LED cities, orange atmospheric airglow, and fishing fleets are blurred by my sidereal drive, while tracking stars as fixed points in space."

"From orbit, star trails streak the lights of cities at night and stamp lightning flashes into the time history, pulling spectacular colors from the darkness of space."

"SpaceX Dragon flies between the stars of deep space, and a sea of clouds lit by the red upper atmospheric airglow. This is a 20 second exposure taken with my orbital sidereal drive that tracks the stars thus allowing long exposures."

"Color of Earth meets the blackness of deep space. Stars above green and red auroras, seen as fixed points due to my homemade orbital sidereal drive."

"Dragon flying among the stars"

"Cosmic colors at sunrise; never get tired of seeing what the new day brings."

"The Milky Way from the vantage of the ISS, with stars as points, rising sun, and cities as yellow streaks below."

This is a collection of photographic highlights from Earth orbit captured by experienced NASA astronaut and former Expedition 71/72 flight engineer, Don Pettit.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit returned to Earth on April 19, 2025, concluding a seven-month science mission aboard the International Space Station.  Pettit spent 220 days in space, earning him a total of 590 days in space over the course of his four spaceflights. He orbited the Earth 3,520 times, traveling 93.3 million miles in low-Earth orbit.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy

NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

For more information about STEM on Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM)

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/D. Pettit
Release Dates: Feb. 26-July 28, 2025

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