donpettit

Streetlights polluting your shots of the starry night sky? A strategically placed laser might be just what you need.

Destin Sandlin of the YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay recently paid a visit to the house of NASA astronaut (and photographer) Don Pettit, who showed Sandlin a trick that he uses to temporarily disable an annoying streetlight just down the street. You can see this "life hack" in action at 1:04 in the video above.

Check out this gorgeous short film in which NASA astronaut Don Pettit shares what it was like to photograph Earth from orbit in the International Space Station. During his time aboard the station, Pettit became one of the most prolific astronaut photographers in the history of space exploration -- one time he clogged up data transfers for three days with photos from a 30-minute shoot.

The 2014 Perseid meteor shower will peak this week, and astrophotographers the world over will be gazing up at the skies, cameras contending with a very bright moon in the hopes of capturing some bright streaks across the sky.

And while some of them will undoubtedly succeed in capturing some stunning shots, there's one view not a single one will be able to get... the view of a meteor shower from above.

Like many of us, astrophotographer Christoph Malin is a big fan of astronaut and fellow photographer Don Pettit. We've featured Pettit's photography several times before -- we even shared his entire talk from Luminance 2012 here -- but in the video above, Malin puts together a little bit of both into a fitting tribute to his favorite "astronaut, poet and astrophotographer."

Want to know how astronauts photograph in space? Just ask Donald Pettit, NASA astronaut and “amateur” photographer. Donald Pettit has called the International Space Station home for over 370 days, and in that time he’s captured some of the most mind-blowing photos of space – and Earth – we’ve ever seen.

We're shared a couple of "stacked star trail" time-lapse videos over the past few months (see here and here), but those videos comprised nighttime photographs taken from the ground. Photographer Christoph Malin recently decided to try his hand at the technique, but instead of using his own earthbound photographs, he used NASA photographs shot from the International Space Station. The resulting video, shown above, features the stars drawing trails across the "sky" while the Earth creates light streaks down below.

Ever wonder what camera gear NASA astronaut Don Pettit uses to shoot his amazing photographs from the International Space Station? Here's a portrait of Don floating around on with his massive collection of Nikon DSLRs and lenses. How much of the gear can you identify?

Last month we shared a long exposure photograph by NASA astronaut Don Pettit that showed star trails and city trails in the same frame. Turns out the photo was just one of many long exposure images shot by Pettit so far during Expedition 31. The photograph above shows star trails, an aurora, and flashes of lightning splattered all across the surface of the Earth.

In a couple of short days, Don Pettit intends to do something that has never been done before: photograph …

Here's a fascinating video by NASA that explains what auroras are and what they look like from space. It's filled with beautiful photographs and time-lapse sequences captured by astronauts on the International Space Station. Astronaut photographer Don Pettit, who maintains a blog about his experiences, writes that taking pictures of Earth is harder than it looks.

This past Sunday, a group of amateur astronomers in San Antonio, Texas successfully “flashed” the International Space Station with …