NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has shared a breathtaking video taken through the window of SpaceX’s Endeavour Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is currently docked to the International Space Station. The colorful play of red and green auroras is visible in the window.
Red and green aurora appear to dance in a timelapse as we flyby looking out Dragon Endeavour’s window with Dragon Freedom in view.
— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 8, 2024
We shot a couple thousand images yesterday trying to get the settings, lighting, and framing just right across multiple orbital nights because the… pic.twitter.com/Y3IhlqTNrO
Within a short 11 seconds, the video shows a dazzling view of the charged particles glowing purple and turquoise hues as they enter Earth’s atmosphere. Dominick combined several thousand individual images into one short video.
While filming from the Crew Dragon’s window, another SpaceX capsule is visible below, docked to another ISS port, waiting to return to Earth in the next few days.
Matthew Dominick traveled to the space station in March as part of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission. His return trip, initially scheduled for October 13, had to be postponed due to the destructive force of Hurricane Milton, which impacted Florida on Wednesday.
Fortunately for us, his passion for photography allowed us to see unique shots of the views from his window. As the Sun enters the most active stage of its 11-year cycle, scientists are expecting incredibly powerful solar storms that could result in the ejection of massive amounts of plasma in our direction.
Auroras are the result of electrically charged particles colliding with the Earth’s magnetosphere. When they collide with oxygen, they emit intense shades of red and green, and when they collide with atmospheric nitrogen, they emit intense shades of blue and violet. Only last week, a powerful X-level solar flare, the second strongest of the year, was powerful enough to cause a radioactive blackout.
Earlier we reported on how the Polaris Dawn crew met an amazing sunset from a record height above Earth.
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