Astronaut’s Remarkable Image Captures Milky Way Beyond Earth’s Horizon

An astronaut recently captured an image of Earth from the International Space Station that offers an entirely different view of our world and what lies beyond. Astronaut Don Pettit captured the image when the ISS was about 265 miles above the Pacific Ocean on January 29, 2025. The image was taken just before sunrise, so the parts of the world visible in the photo are still cloaked in darkness. In the background, the gassy, oblong Milky Way is visible. The Milky Way is seen edge-on, meaning that the photo looks across the galaxy’s diameter. The photo was taken with a camera using low light and long duration settings, helping Pettit capture the blur of Earth’s rotation against a focused backdrop of Milky Way stars. The photo is peculiar in that our planet—so famously blue and green with wisps of white clouds—is instead a mossy green hue. A thin band of white delineates the edge of the planet’s atmosphere and the boundary between our world and space. Pettit is part of NASA’s Expediti ... Read full article.