A world of lights outside the ISS: Breathtaking time-lapse pieces together stunning photos of Earth captured by astronaut Don Pettit
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Don Pettit has become one of Nasa's most prolific astronaut photographers during his expeditions aboard the ISS.
From star trails to auroras, Pettit's engineering ingenuity and natural curiosity has led him to create photos that are unrivalled in their beauty.
At one point, he saturated the ISS' downlink transfers with photos for three full days from just one 30-minute photographic session in space.
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Breathtaking: Don Pettit took several long-exposure photographs while orbiting the Earth on Expedition 31, where he was a flight engineer. To capture the light trails, Pettit took multiple 30-second exposures and combined them digitally to create images that resembled 10- to 15-minute exposures. This image shows stars, auroras and thunderstorms across the surface of the Earth
Now San Francisco-based SmugMug filmmaker Anton Lorimer has created a captivating time-lapse featuring some of Pettit's best photos of the Earth and beyond.
'We get training on photography and the use of the cameras on space station,' explained Pettit. 'And these are professional-level cameras…they're almost like a little computer in themselves.'
Astronauts on the ISS are asked to take pictures of Earth and its surrounding, providing a scientific data set that has been recorded now for over 14 years.
About 1.2 million pictures were taken as of July 2012 and that number is growing.
'These images are also art,' said Pettit. 'They illustrate to people what space is like for those who don't get a chance to fly in space.
Starry eyed: From star trails to auroras, Pettit's engineering ingenuity and natural curiosity has led him to create photos that are unrivalled in their beauty. This image shows an aurora forming above Earth as solar winds hit the planet's magnetosphere
Stunning: Don Pettit shot this time-lapse photos while aboard the International Space Station in 2012. Astronauts on the ISS are asked to take pictures of Earth and its surrounding, providing a scientific data set that has been recorded now for over 14 years
View from above: Most images on the ISS are taken in the cupola, where there are often as up to eight cameras set up with different lenses. At times, astronauts compete with each other for the best position
One of Pettit's favourite cameras is the 400mm f/2. 'In weightlessness, this becomes a beautiful piece of equipment to use,' said Pettit.
'You can completely control it by grabbing on to the camera. And it's heavy enough that small things like your heartbeat won't make the lens jiggle.
'If you pick up a camera body with a small lens on it, the pulse in your fingers will make the camera shake.'
To get around this, Pettit taped a stick on the back of the camera, which allowed him to move the equipment with just two fingers.
This meant that he could fly the camera around without physically having his fingers on the camera. And since the stick was aligned with the optical centre, he could slowly rotate the camera through 360 degrees.
'Looking at Earth from space is amazingly beautiful,' said Pettit. 'You can see things on the length scale of half a continent.
But he argues that photos of Earth from space are no more beautiful than those taken from Earth. 'It's just a different perspective of what we're used to seeing,' he said.
Q&A WITH DON PETTIT, NASA'S 'MOST PROLIFIC ASTRONAUT PHOTOGRAPHER'
Astro-photographer: Donald Roy Pettit (pictured), 59, is a veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station, one space shuttle mission and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica
What are some of your favourite subjects to photograph from space?
My favourite subject is the earth at night. Aurora is just amazingly beautiful. It's this glowing upper part of the atmosphere that crawls around like amoebas in the sky.
Other aspects of night-time photography: atmospheric air glow. Originally people thought the atmosphere glowed more or less uniformly. But the pictures we're taking on station show that there's spatial structure in the atmospheric air glow.
Then there's polar mesospheric clouds, also known as noctilucent clouds. These are clouds in the upper part of the atmosphere, right on the fringes of space, that are sort of a scientific mystery in terms of why they form.
And cities at night. The way human beings sprinkle their light bulbs around is a fascinating statement on how we as human beings define our urban areas. It's a juxtaposition between geography, technology that you choose, and culture.
What are some of your photographic challenges in space?
The traits that make a good photograph on Earth still apply to taking a picture in space. Focus is really important. And exposure.
In space, you can have huge variations in brightness. The sunny-16 rule sort of applies, but you have to add or subtract about 2 more f-stops because the full exoatmospheric sun on the tops of clouds is really bright. If you just take a standard picture, the cloud tops will all be snow white with no detail at all. So you need to underexpose your picture when you have a lot of clouds within your field of view.
Aurora is also tricky. The green part of the aurora is about two stops brighter than the red part. If you expose for the greens, you won't see the reds. If you expose for the reds, the greens will be saturated. We see these same things on Earth, compromising between what you can and can't see.
How did you create your star trail images?
Star trail images have been photographed by amateur astronomers for years. You put your camera on a tripod, point it some place up in the sky, then as Earth turns while the shutter's open, the stars make trails.
I tried the same thing from station. The dynamics are the same, but the physics behind the motions are different. You still see stars going in circles, but they're not going in circles around the north star, they're going in circles around the pitch access of station as it goes around Earth.
You also see cities streak by on the surface of Earth. They move with a combination of our orbital motion and Earth turning at the same time. Then you've got the atmosphere on edge, and it glows. Scientists call that air glow.
Speeding bullet: 'Star trail images have been photographed by amateur astronomers for years. You put your camera on a tripod, point it some place up in the sky, then as Earth turns while the shutter's open, the stars make trails,' said Petit
No filter: About 1.2 million pictures were taken as of July 2012 and that number is growing. This incredible image of Earth's oceans was taken by Don Pettit during one of his stays aboard the ISS
Window seat: A view of Earth and the ISS' solar panels as seen from one of the windows of the cupola, where most of the space photography takes place
'We find Earth from space exceptionally beautiful because we're so polarised to the natural beauty around us when we're walking on Earth.'
But not all of the photography involves capturing the stunning views of Earth from space. 'There's a lot of engineering photography that we do,' said Pettit.
'We have to take macro images of pins in an electrical connector or a bit of grunge in a hydraulic quick-disconnect fitting or little patterns that might develop on the surface of one of the windows.
These things need to be documented so the images can be downlinked for engineers on the ground to assess what's happening to the systems on space station.
Most images on the ISS are taken in the cupola, where there are often as up to eight cameras set up with different lenses. At times, astronauts compete with each other for the best position.
'Say a volcano's going off,' said Pettit. 'Maybe one crewmate has a 400mm, maybe one has a midrange 85-180mm lens.
'And then someone's shooting with a wide-angle lens. We're all shooting at the same subject at the same time in this rather small space.'
'It makes my heart sing to see people using my pictures,' added Pettit. 'There's no point in taking pictures and hiding them in a closet.
'You want to take pictures and share them freely with anybody who's willing to look at your photography. And that, to me, is more of a compliment than anything else.'
Incredible: 'You see cities streak by on the surface of Earth,' said Pettit. 'They move with a combination of our orbital motion and Earth turning at the same time'. In this images, Pettit attempted to capture both the stars and the city lights using long exposure photography
Dream team: On the left is a crew shot taken during Expedition 31 some days before they captured the first SpaceX Dragon commercial spacecraft. On the left is Andre Kuipers, centre is Joe Acaba and right, Don Pettit. The right image shows the team posing onboard the ISS
Looking back: 'It makes my heart sing to see people using my pictures,' said Pettit. 'There's no point in taking pictures and hiding them'
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