An astronaut shot his first-ever time-lapse – and let’s just say it’s way better than my first attempt to capture the aurora

A still shot from Jonny Kim's space time-lapse of the aurora over Earth.

I remember the first time I ever caught the Northern Lights on camera – I was photographing the night sky when I was startled to see a pale green “cloud” on the back of the camera that I couldn’t see with my eyes. But NASA astronaut Jonny Kim recently shared his first-ever attempt at taking a time-lapse – and it’s quite impressive.

The timelapse, shared on the astronaut’s social media pages, shows a time-lapse of Earth taken from the International Space Station. The sped-up video starts with city lights and even some flashes of lightning seen from space, but ends with colorful wisps dancing over Southeast Asia and Australia as the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights makes an appearance at the end of the timelapse.