This photograph is all over the Internet, but we just have to repost it here. It was taken by Ron Garan, an astronaut on the International Space Station, and shows one of the Perseid meteors streaking downward through Earth’s atmosphere.
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I saw that posted somewhere else with about the same caption a couple hours ago.
It was cool then and it’s cool now.
What’s that blue light off to the side? Is that… The sun… Shining off of the ocean? Whatever it is, it’s also really cool.
And what’s the rainbow thing?
Why am I asking so many questions about what’s really a perfectly straightforward picture?
I think the blue light is where dawn is breaking on the Earth below.
The faint hazy “rainbow thing” is airglow, which is like a permanent, very faint, aurora. You can see in night shots from the station and shuttle sometimes.
*can see it
Oh, cool. Airglow. I like that name.
Where/when was it taken? I saw an absolutely AMAZING meteor on Friday the 12th, this might be the same.
August 13, about 220 miles above China.
Sweet!
It looks kind of grainy…
is that because it’s zoomed in a lot, because the camera was old, or just problems with being thrown around the internet a lot?
Or because it was taken out of the window of the International Space Station?
(Reposting an image doesn’t diminish the quality.)
I AM PUTTING THIS IN MY “TO THE SKY” VIDEO
This is beautiful. That “airglow” thing, is it caused by the atmosphere?
Wow.