Thomas Pesquet is an astronaut from France who likes to take cool photos of Planet Earth from its current location, the International Space Station (ISS). Most recently, he photographed a scene that seemed to be the edge of the Earth.
The photo he posted on Twitter, showing the Earth vertically. There were bright urban lights and light from the atmosphere side by side with the rays of the stars far away.
"Night photo taken from Cupola ISS, sometimes the light from the stars battles against the light from the city to determine who is the brightest and more beautiful," he wrote on Twitter.
The orange-like color that appears between Earth and space is made up of neutral sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere, which come from burning meteors. The sodium atoms create visible light from space.
A night picture from the Cupola: sometimes star lights battle it out with city lights for who's the brightest and more beautiful. #MissionAlpha https://t.co/9Tt9liMl3C pic.twitter.com/rEtGYfWu0Y
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) September 5, 2021
Pesquet flew on the ISS carrying the flag of the European Union's space agency, the European Space Agency (ESA). This is his second mission on the ISS, where he arrived last April aboard a SpaceX-made capsule.
Taking photos from space, according to Pesquet, presents its own challenges. "Photos like this are hard to take and I've missed more than what I've shared," she said.
"So as a photographer, not only do you have to be completely still with the camera, the space station is also moving very fast so that's the challenge of space photography," he added.
He usually takes photos of the location on the ISS called Cupola, which is a kind of dome facing downwards. Usually, the ISS moves with the 'belly' below so that it is considered an ideal place to snap photos of the beauty of Planet Earth.
