Is there anything more beautiful than a picturesque sunset?
You can’t scroll instagram without seeing at least one gorgeous sunset picture daily, it seems, and as awe-inspiring as one can be, just wait until you see what they look like from space.
Though it’s unlikely many of us will get to witness a space sunset in person, thanks to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, we got something close.
While serving their tour aboard the ISS, several astronauts snapped a few photos of the phenomenon, and were kind enough to share them with the world.
Spectacular doesn’t even begin to describe the views.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and geophysicist Alexander Gerst gave us some stunning photos during his second stint on the ISS as part of the Horizons mission and shared them via Flikr/Astro Alex – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.
Another image was snapped by a member of NASA’s Expedition 49 crew in 2016 that also shows a different perspective of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere during sunset over South Atlantic.
The image depicts the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere and home to clouds, smoke, and dust particles, shown as bright red-orange line.
The ISS was halfway between South America and South Africa at the time of the photo, from the station’s altitude astronauts are able to see over 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) to the horizon.
Easy enough, then, to capture the influence of Patagonian Desert dust, which is blown out towards the ocean by strong winds.
Since the ISS orbits the planet once every 90 minutes, that means those onboard can witness 16 such striking sunsets a day – and the same goes for sunrises, though most of the time they’re missed by astronauts because of sleep or work.
But now, we can all enjoy the view thanks to the incredible photography work of Alexander Gerst!
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