Don Pettit’s been snapping away in orbit again. This time, the NASA astronaut has captured a stunning image of the Milky Way from the International Space Station (ISS) . It also features Earth and city lights some 250 miles below the orbital outpost.
Starry starry night from an orbital palette pic.twitter.com/YpFVIEMzO9
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) February 15, 2025
Sharing it on social media on Sunday, the epic image quickly picked up a lot of likes and positive comments.
One contributor wrote: “If I saw this in person I’d never want to return to Earth. Simply stunning,” while another described it as “cosmic strokes on a celestial canvas.”
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The image follows a similarly striking shot (below) posted by Pettit last week, captured from inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule currently docked at the space station.
Star field from @Space_Station. Taken from the SpaceX Crew 9 Dragon vehicle showing the Southern Cross region using my homemade star tracker. Big thanks to @BabakTafreshi for doing the image processing I can’t do on orbit. pic.twitter.com/Tx4SmHXUXk
— Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) February 12, 2025
The “star tracker” that Pettit refers to is a device that he co-designed and built to capture long-exposure, blur-free photographs of stars. The device works by rotating the camera at the same rate as the station’s orbit — once every 90 minutes — compensating for the station’s motion to enable sharp photos of distant stars.
Since arriving at the ISS in September last year, Pettit has been showing off his photography skills by posting a slew of impressive images of Earth and beyond.
One of his most stunning efforts is of rivers in the Amazon Basin, which he described as looking like “flowing silver snakes.” He also captured the recent maiden launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket in a somewhat surreal image, and photographed a Crew Dragon capsule as it returned to Earth at high speed at the end of the historic Polaris Dawn mission.
Pettit recently took part in a Q&A session from the ISS in which he talked about what it’s like to take photos of Earth from inside the space-based facility, while he has also performed the coolest camera lens swap you’ll ever see — thanks to microgravity.