ISS044-E-45215 Milky Way.jpg
Astronaut photograph ISS044-E-45215 was acquired on August 9, 2015, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 28 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 44 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Texas State U., Jacobs Contract at NASA-JSC and Mark Matney, NASA-JSC.
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ISS044 E 45215 Milky Way, Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see the world at night on every orbit —that’s 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earth’s night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. ISS was passing over the island nation of Kiribati at the time, about 2600 kilometers (1,600 miles) south of Hawaii.  Knowing the exact time and the location of the ISS, scientists were able to match the star field in the photo to charts describing which stars should have been visible at that moment. They identified the pattern of stars in the photo as our Milky Way galaxy (looking toward its center). The dark patches are dense dust clouds in an inner spiral arm of our galaxy; such clouds can block our view of stars toward the center.  The curvature of the Earth crosses the center of the image and is illuminated by a variety of airglow layers in orange, green, and red. Setting stars are visible even through the dense orange-green airglow.  The brightest light in the image is a lightning flash that illuminated a large mass of clouds. The flash reflected off the shiny solar arrays of the ISS and back to the camera. The dim equatorial cloud sheet is so extensive that it covers most of the sea surface in this view.
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ISS044 E 45215 Milky Way, ISS Expedition 44 Crew Earth Observations
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ISS044 E 45215 天の川、国際宇宙ステーションに乗った宇宙飛行士。宇宙飛行士は、中央赤道太平洋の遠方を眺めながら、地球の夜光の広々とした短い写真を撮影した。ISSは当時、ハワイの南約2600kmの島国キリバスを通過していた。科学者たちは、ISSの正確な時間と場所を知って、写真の星場を一致させ、その瞬間にどの星が見えるべきかを説明するチャートを作成した。彼らは写真の中の星のパターンを我々の天の川銀河(中心を見ている)と特定した。暗い斑点は、銀河の内側の渦巻く腕にある密度の高い塵雲であり、そのような雲は、中心に向かって星の視界を遮ることができる。地球の曲率は画像の中央を横切り、オレンジ、緑、赤のさまざまな気功層によって照らされる。星座は濃いオレンジ色と緑色の気流の中でも見える。画像で最も明るいのは、大量の雲を照らす稲妻である。フラッシュは、ISSの輝く太陽電池アレイから反射してカメラに戻した。深赤道の雲シートは非常に広大であるため、このビューで海面の大部分を覆う。
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ISS044 E 45215 天の川、第44次長期滞在 乗組員の地球観測
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dust cloud