Were you lucky enough to catch the Northern Lights recently?
Some of us got to see this rare lightshow in the northern hemisphere when energy from a solar storm caused the Earth's sky to light up with brilliant dancing colors.
No one got as good a view as NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, though. He viewed the whole display from the International Space Station (ISS), creating an amazing timelapse video that he's shared on social media.
In it you can see the green and red lights of the auroras dance across Earth's upper atmosphere. At sunrise, the spacecraft is bathed in blue light.
The astronaut, who launched to the International Space Station March 3, 2024 as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission, is spending approximately six months conducting science experiments and maintaining the space station.
Watch what the aurora borealis looked like from space:
Timelapse of the moon setting into streams of red and green aurora followed by a sunrise lighting up Soyuz with a light blue. The aurora have been amazing the past few days. Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus. 15mm, T1.8, 1/3s exposure,… pic.twitter.com/otFv5pZ6vdAugust 12, 2024
Matthew Dominick has been sharing incredible photos on his X account, @dominickmatthew.
The sun has been especially active recently, causing powerful geomagnetic storms that we view from the earth as colorful lights in the sky.
Essentially, energized particles from the sun hit Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph (72 million kph) causing the incredible light show.
