(Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit)
Astronauts are lots of things. They’re typically researchers, engineers, or pilots. And when it comes to NASA astronaut Don Pettit, he’s likewise an astrophotographer.
Pettit is presently on his 3rd remain on the International Space Station (ISS), and he’s continuing his long-running custom of taking out-of-this-world images (pun planned). His newest shot, a picture of the stars and numerous galaxies, showcases not just his visual expertise, however likewise his engineering abilities– he utilized a self-designed tool to achieve this image.
Initially glimpse, the image may appear like a rather normal shot from the ISS: You see stars and the curvature of Earth, with an unique orange radiance above our world’s surface area. There’s something weird about the image: The surface area of Earth is blurred, yet hundreds if not thousands of stars are in best focus.
Under typical scenarios, long-exposure photos such as this need to reveal the stars as streaks throughout the sky, because the ISS is moving at about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km per hour).
Therein lies Pettit’s genius. He’s brought with him to area a homemade star tracker, a gadget that turns an electronic camera to make up for the ISS’s motion. It’s a variation on a tool utilized by astrophotographers in the world to take long direct exposures of the stars as the world turns below the night sky, making up for that rotation to keep the stars from ending up being streaks in the image.
“This tracker turns at 90 minutes [sic] duration to match the pitch rate of ISS. Without this tracker, you can not take image longer than 1/2 sec [sic] without star blur due to the rate of orbital movement,” composed Pettit on Reddit.
The outcome is an incredibly clear picture of the night sky, revealing greatly more stars than is possible with a much shorter direct exposure. (Longer direct exposures allow more light, or in this case, fainter stars.)
Breaking area news, the most recent updates on rocket launches, skywatching occasions and more!
In area, you can see stars!I flew a home-made tracking gadget that permits time direct exposures needed to picture star fields.Stay tuned for more pictures like this. pic.twitter.com/OO57o4oU8lDecember 5, 2024
This isn’t the very first time Pettit showed his engineering abilities on the ISS. In 2008, he designed the zero-G coffee cup, which ended up being the very first trademarked creation in area.
The astronaut was tired of drinking his tea and coffee out of pouches through straws, sort of like a Capri Sun– in microgravity, you can’t tip a cup to get the liquid out, and if you shake it, the liquid will slosh out. Pettit made an open-container cup from a piece of plastic that utilizes surface area stress to operate comparable to a cup on Earth.
“It includes back the measurement of what it resembles to be a human remaining in a civilized method,” he stated in a YouTube video.
