Astronauts are many issues. They’re typically scientists, engineers, or pilots. And within the case of NASA astronaut Don Pettit, he is additionally an astrophotographer.
Pettit is at the moment on his third keep on the Worldwide Area Station (ISS), and he is persevering with his long-running custom of taking out-of-this-world photographs (pun meant). His newest shot, a picture of the celebs and several other galaxies, showcases not solely his visible prowess, but in addition his engineering abilities — he used a self-designed instrument to perform this photograph.
At first look, the picture would possibly appear to be a relatively typical shot from the ISS: You see stars and the curvature of Earth, with a definite orange glow above our planet’s floor. However there’s one thing unusual concerning the photograph: The floor of Earth is blurred, but lots of if not hundreds of stars are in good focus.
Underneath regular circumstances, long-exposure images resembling this could present the celebs as streaks throughout the sky, because the ISS is shifting at about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km per hour).
However therein lies Pettit’s genius. He is introduced with him to house a selfmade star tracker, a tool that rotates a digital camera to compensate for the ISS’s motion. It is a variation on a instrument utilized by astrophotographers on Earth to take lengthy exposures of the celebs because the planet rotates beneath the night time sky, compensating for that rotation to maintain the celebs from changing into streaks within the picture.
“This tracker rotates at 90 min [sic] interval to match the pitch charge of ISS. With out this tracker, you can’t take photograph longer than 1/2 sec [sic] with out star blur as a result of charge of orbital movement,” wrote Pettit on Reddit.
The result’s an unbelievably clear picture of the night time sky, displaying vastly extra stars than is feasible with a shorter publicity. (Longer exposures let in additional mild, or on this case, fainter stars.)
In house, you’ll be able to see stars!I flew a home-made monitoring machine that permits time exposures required to {photograph} star fields.Keep tuned for extra photographs like this. pic.twitter.com/OO57o4oU8lDecember 5, 2024
This is not the primary time Pettit demonstrated his engineering abilities on the ISS. In 2008, he devised the zero-G espresso cup, which grew to become the primary patented invention in house.
The astronaut was uninterested in sipping his tea and low out of pouches by straws, kind of like a Capri Solar — in microgravity, you’ll be able to’t tip a cup to get the liquid out, and when you shake it, the liquid will slosh out. However Pettit customary an open-container cup from a chunk of plastic that makes use of floor stress to perform akin to a cup on Earth.
“It provides again the dimension of what it’s prefer to be a human being in a civilized manner,” he stated in a YouTube video.
