A Timelapse Of All The Different Sights Astronauts See From The ISS

An astronaut aboard the ISS sees some pretty unbelievable things when he or she look out the window . And now , this gorgeous timelapse consolidates some of the most amazing of those mickle , so that the eternal sleep of us can get a glance , too .

Put together by the ESA from images taken by astronaut Alexander Gerst , the timelapse features some of the classic image that we ’ve seen amount down from the ISS over the last months . ( include dayspring in motion , and a opinion of Cygnus as it ’s leave out from the ISS ’s robotic arm . ) particularly fascinating to me , though , are the light trails that show up halfway through the timelapse .

The round maven lead that you often see in come along in ring around the sky are not unusual features in timelapses of nature . Here , the perspective is shift , with the star trails moving directly up before disappear over the horizon . Even more interesting , though , is that the 2nd series of clear lead that you see are not from stars at all — they ’re from metropolis . Instead of looking at the pattern of the luminosity station down towards us from space , we ’re seeing instead the pattern of light that we ourselves are sending upward as they move across blank themselves .