[/caption]

Tracing a bright star upon the Earth, the lights of Russia’s capital city blaze beyond the solar panels of the International Space Station in this photo, captured by the Expedition 30 crew on the night of March 28, 2012.

As an electric-blue dawn flares around Earth’s northeastern limb, the green and purple fire of the Aurora Borealis shimmers and stretches away to the northwest above a pale yellow line of airglow.

Traveling at 17,500 miles an hour (28,163 km/hr), the ISS was approximately 240 miles (386 km) above the Russian city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) when this photo was taken.

Image: NASA

Jason Major

A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!

Recent Posts

The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed

Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago…

7 hours ago

Artemis Astronauts Will Deploy New Seismometers on the Moon

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers…

1 day ago

Ice Deposits on Ceres Might Only Be a Few Thousand Years Old

The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice. Astronomers thought the…

1 day ago

The Mystery of Cosmic Rays Deepens

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles accelerated to extreme velocities approaching the speed of light. It…

1 day ago

NASA Confirms that a Piece of its Battery Pack Smashed into a Florida Home

NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit. But what goes up must…

1 day ago

Are Titan's Dunes Made of Comet Dust?

A new theory suggests that Titan's majestic dune fields may have come from outer space.…

2 days ago