NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronauts have released pictures of beautiful stars taken directly from the space station.



On the 21st local time, the US weekly Newsweek reported on the 'Star Trail' photo taken by astronaut Donald Pettit with his own camera.



Pettid is an American astronaut who has made more than three visits to the International Space Station (ISS) alone for his missions, and is also an astrophotographer whose hobby is documenting the appearance of space and the Earth in his spare time while in space.



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On the 11th, he released the photo to an online community, saying, "I have captured something that a space photographer could dream of.



When Pettid visited the space station for his last mission in 2012, he installed a camera on a domed glass window and used a shutter exposure function to record the movement of the stars.



He set the shutter exposure to 15 minutes, and because he was shooting a relatively long exposure, the result was a blurry look, but the Earth and the stars were accurately captured.



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The white line at the top of the picture is the trajectory of a star orbiting the Earth, and the round object at the bottom is the Earth.

The orange lines on Earth represent each city light, and the blue dots represent storms and lightning in each area.



You can also see the green membrane separating Earth and space in the picture, an atmospheric light phenomenon that has a color similar to the aurora we see from Earth.



In an interview with the media, Pettid revealed how she managed to capture a photo like this at a station.



"We work 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, and we don't do any other work. Outside of working hours we can eat, sleep, connect with family and do whatever we want," he said.



He continued, "I spend my free time taking pictures, and if I can use a part of the day to take pictures, it will be the best day for me," he added, showing his passion for photography.


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But if he had a limitation, it was the orbital speed of the space station.



With the space station orbiting the earth for 90 minutes and the shadows cast from the sun for 30 minutes, in the end, Peted only had an hour to shoot.



"It's still worth the wait, though," Petted concluded. "The stars are brighter and more colorful than you know."



(Photo = Donald Pettit Twitter, Facebook)