A rare camera angle from the International Space Station has produced a striking view that pulls together the station, Earth’s atmosphere and deep space in a single frame.
JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui took the photo from a window in the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module during the nearly five-month SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the ISS. Yui returned from space in January.
“This view only happens when the ISS is oriented with its front and back reversed from the usual direction of travel, it’s a very rare sight,” Yui wrote in a May 14 post on X.
Yui flew on Crew-11 with NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
The image shows part of the space station in the foreground, including its solar panels. Beneath that is the edge of Earth and the atmosphere, glowing with red and green auroras.
Yui said the background also includes Alpha Centauri in the upper right-hand corner, the Coalsack nebula, the Southern Cross constellation and Eta Carinae.
“This scene lets you feel the three-dimensional depth of the universe, from the window frame just a few centimeters from the camera, to the solar panels dozens of meters away, to the auroras,” Yui said.
“With the ISS truss extending toward the abyss of space, this composition seems to symbolize the future where humanity’s wisdom will challenge the deep cosmos, it’s one of my favorites lol.”
Yui’s comments were translated from Japanese to English.
