Star Trails as Seen From Space

By Nancy Atkinson - March 2, 2012 at 2:09 AM UTC | Observing

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Astronaut Don Pettit has just put another wow-factor in astrophotography from the International Space Station, and provided a whole new perspective on a common but eye-catching photography technique of creating star trails. He posted two images on his

Google+ page

, with this description: "Star trails. I leave the shutter open for a long period, and our orbital motion makes the stars streak." Just gorgeous.

See his second stunning image below.

[caption id="attachment_93920" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Star trails, with a module from the International Space Station showing up in black. Credit: Don Pettit/NASA"]

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com