One amazing perk that comes with being a NASA astronaut is that you can watch meteor showers up close and from above. Astronaut Ron Garan captured this awesome photograph from the International Space Station of a Perseid meteor burning up in our atmosphere.
By the way, did you notice the hot pixels littering the frame? That’s probably why NASA sometimes only uses DSLRs once before too many pixels are destroyed by space radiation.
As Space Shuttle Atlantis left the International Space Station to head back to Earth for the final time, one of the astronauts on the ISS captured this beautiful image of the shuttle’s glowing re-entry. Any guesses for what shutter speed this was shot at?
Station Crew Views Shuttle Landing (via Popular Science)
Update: Someone from the Photo Operations Group at the Johnson Space Center was kind enough to leave a comment with the answer: 1.6 seconds, f/2.8 at an ISO of 10000.
NASA created this beautiful time-lapse video with photos taken from Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station. It’s a neat look at the size of the Earth, and includes a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis from space!
(via duckrabbit)
Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli recently captured some amazing one-of-a-kind photographs of the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station from about 600 feet away using a Nikon D3x and 24-120mm lens. What’s interesting is the standard practice for returning to Earth: while the memory cards are brought down safely with the astronauts in a descent module, the camera gear is left in the orbital module, which falls into Earth’s atmosphere and burns up!
That’s standard practice for Soyuz re-entries: The astronauts take only what they need and shed the excess baggage to cut down on weight … even if that excess baggage retails for about $8,000, as was the case for the Nikon. [#]
Nespoli reportedly also brought a D2Xs up as well. Too bad they couldn’t just leave it on the Space Station and add to its Nikon stash…
(via Cosmic Log)
P.S. Nespoli shot 100,000 while in space, and has posted many of them to his Flickr page.
Nikon and NASA are showcasing some amazing photos taken aboard the International Space Station with Nikon equipment. According to Nikon, NASA took over 700,000 photos with the Nikon gear kept on board, which includes one Nikon D3S DSLR, eight Nikon D2XS cameras, 36 NIKKOR lenses including three teleconverters, seven SB-800 Speedlights, and other gear. Nikon notes that the D3S is unmodified, and is the same quality as available on the consumer market.
Nikon has a long history with NASA since sending a Nikon F camera with Apollo 15 in 1971. Since then, Nikon’s enjoyed exposure while helping NASA get image exposures. Most recently, the D3S that is currently on board was delivered to the ISS via the Space Shuttle Discovery, launched April 10, 2010. NASA says each shuttle launch costs approximately $450 million — that is one expensive delivery! Here are more images from the International Space Station taken with Nikon gear:
Most of you probably know the astronauts on the ISS use a lot of Nikon gear for their photography. The video above shows American astronaut Jeff Williams use one of the cameras onboard as an accelerometer during a reboost, through which the ISS maintains its orbit. It’s pretty neat seeing the camera floating around.
For the past two weeks, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi has been beaming down photographs of Earth from the International Space Station using his TwitPic account. The photographs, taken with a Nikon D2Xs, show various cities and landmarks around the world as the ISS flies roughly 200 miles overhead at an average of 17,227 mph.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco, CA. Beautiful shadow :-)
Flew over Port_Au_Prince of Haiti this afternoon. Our thoughts and prayers to Haiti people, from ISS.
Mount Fuji, Japan. 3,776m. The highest mountain in Japan.
Moscow, Russia. Star City is far back on the right upper corner. #spacetweet
KSC, Florida. Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-130 is ready to launch on Sunday!!!
For more of this amazing photography, check out his Twitter or Twitpic page.
(via PopPhoto Flash)
