Polar auroras in high-definition ISS time lapse video by German astronaut
A German astronaut has captured stunning images of polar auroras as he orbited Earth on the International Space Station. Alexander Gerst’s images led to the creation of the Ultra-HD – or ‘4K’ time lapse video, running at 25 frames per second.
The photographs were taken at a resolution of 4,256 x 2,832
pixels and depict Gerst’s orbit around the Earth alongside his
fellow ISS Space Station expedition 40 crewmembers.
His journey shows the rippling greenish lights characteristic of
the electrically-charged sun particle collisions, bright city
lights in the nighttime, the different hues of the Earth’s
atmosphere and a satellite launch.
“The artistic effects of the light trails from stars and
cities at night are created by superimposing the individual
images and fading them out slowly,” the European Space
Agency wrote in a release with the video.
The Ultra-High-Definition video – the best video quality possible
to date – comes with the instruction: “Be sure to change the
settings in YouTube if your computer or television can handle it
for the full effect.”
Gerst is spending some five and a half months on the ISS. He
arrived in May on a Soyuz spacecraft launched from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The mission is dubbed “Blue Dot” after the way the Earth looked
in a photo captured by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft.
