NASA astronaut Don Pettit dazzled us on Tuesday with a gorgeous image showing star trails and city lights as seen from the International Space Station (ISS).
On Wednesday, he turned the “wow” dial all the way up to 11 by sharing a video clip from which Tuesday’s image was taken.
The surreal footage (below) shows the star trail expanding, with the city lights also trailing across the frame.
Here is a movie clip (processed by Babak- big thanks) sequentially adding the star trail still frames creating orbital motion. pic.twitter.com/upC4vNC5mA
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) March 12, 2025
Many of Pettit’s 87,000 followers on X were suitably impressed by the dramatic footage. One wrote: “That is next level phenomenal,” while someone else described it as “magically mesmerizing.” Another quipped: “Stellar work, Don!”
The long-exposure shot is one of many breathtaking photos that the American astronaut has shared with earthlings during the course of his six-month orbital mission.
This one of a gorgeous aurora over Earth grabbed a lot of attention, as did this one of an estuary in Madagascar that Pettit described as reminding him of “the arteries in your retina.”
He also snapped a unique image that captured the maiden launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket in January 2025. While the image is dominated by star trails, look closely and you can see another trail — that of the New Glenn’s upper stage in coast phase high above Earth.
Pettit is one of many astronauts who have dazzled us with their space photography skills. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, for example, has an incredible talent for capturing beautiful shots of Earth from 250 miles up. Matthew Dominick, too, has a keen eye and shared many amazing shots throughout his six-month ISS mission, which ended last fall.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.