Reflecting on reflections: working in the International Space Station Cupola setting up for a night pass of imagery while using a flashlight. I captured this moment as a self portrait. Nikon D3s, 8mm fisheye, f2.8, 1/10th sec, ISO 1600, Expedition 30, 2012

Happy Father’s Day to Don Pettit, inspiring the next generation of space explorers.

Sao Paulo, Brazil at night, showing a patchwork of mercury VS sodium vapor lighting visible from International Space Station. Older mercury vapor lighting is seen as blueish-green in the older, center part of town while yellow sodium vapor lighting appears in the newer surrounding regions.

Yo-yo in space! Microgravity makes inventing new tricks easy, and when you invent them, you get to name them! I'll be bringing a new set of yo-yos on my next mission to International Space Station this September.

I'm not sure what made this streak. It looks like a burning meteor but appears significantly above the atmosphere from this perspective. It might be a solar reflection "flash" from an Iridium satellite. Any ideas? Captured with Nikon D3s with IR blocking filter removed, 15

Chicago at night from International Space Station; showing its distinct grid pattern and Lake Michigan shoreline. Nikon D3s, 85mm, f1.4, 1/125th sec, ISO 6400, Expedition 31, 2012.

When you walk to a rocket, never pass up the chance to use the toilet. By the time of climbing into the space shuttle, I had been zipped up in my orange ACES spacesuit for nearly 2 hours with perhaps another 5 before doffing on orbit. Fortunately, the NASA engineers had thought

Orbital eye wash: NASA engineers have come up with a simple method for emergency eye wash in weightlessness. We practice on the ground so if needed we can quickly deploy and treat ourselves or one of our crew mates.

Star trail from International Space Station, with ghostly blue outline of a solar panel. Multiple atmospheric layers are visible due to solar driven excitation of atomic oxygen (green) and hydroxyl (-OH) radicals (orange-pink). The star trails become curved near the horizon due to the

Yo-Yo Ma recording of Bach Cello Suite No. 1 driving a water-bubble sphere on International Space Station. See previous posts for details on this water-speaker setup. Expedition 31, 2012.

An X Space... from space?! @DominickMatthew joins us from the International Space Station to talk with @Astro_Pettit about astrophotography in low Earth orbit. We're taking your questions—join us Wednesday, July 24 at 4:05pm ET! x.com/i/spaces/1mrGm…

Star field image of the Southern Cross from International Space Station during Expedition 6 in 2003 showing the atmosphere on edge illuminated by green airglow from atomic oxygen. At this time Space Station’s orbital attitude was a solar inertial attitude (XPOP) that allowed the solar

Amazing edge-view of a sprite from International Space Station by astronaut Matthew Dominick. This excerpt shows a sprite captured at the horizon edge during a nighttime pass over southeast Asia. This sprite reaches approximately 60 kilometer altitudes, which is in the accepted range of 35-90

x.com/i/article/1823…

One in a million! Unknown to me at the time, this photograph I took on Expedition 30 in 2012 was the one millionth photograph taken on the ISS. It could have been, and fortunately was not, a typical engineering image of a clogged toilet urine filter (second photo). Now the

Little black spot on the sun (today); the Transit of Venus from ISS in 2012, next chance is 2117 Transit of Venus seen with a solar panel and earth horizon from ISS. This two-exposure composite has one optimized for the solar panel-earth and the second for the solar disk

The Space Station Coffee Machine; turns yesterday’s coffee into today’s coffee; starting the morning off with a fresh bag of coffee from our galley dispenser (1), the potable water comes from our distillation-filtration unit (2), via a mess of plumbing (3), with the “head

Camana, Peru region in near infrared. Wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains, this lush flora-packed river delta appears as bright magenta. Camana is the grayish feature in the lower center of the river delta. This is in stark contrast to the sparse foliage in

Comet Lovejoy in near-infrared from @ISS on December 26, 2011 (1st photo) and normal visible image taken on December 22, 2011 (2nd photo). I was surprised that in this instance, the Ir image did not reveal any remarkable detail, actually less detail, than the normal visible

This was so fascinating. I had a teflon knitting needle on @ISS and charged it by rubbing with my Russian fur boots. Then I directed water droplets from a syringe towards the charged knitting needle and this is the resulting dynamics. The droplets, due to charge forces, go