Stunning timelapse video shows the northern lights from space thanks to a solar storm
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The northern lights may appear stunning from Earth, but it turns out they look even better from space.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick released stunning timelapse footage of auroras dancing above Earth this week, as seen from the International Space Station.
The video, posted on August 12, shows the moon setting and the subsequent sunrise amid streams of red and green.
The sunrise illuminates an orbiting Soyuz spacecraft in blue.
"The aurora have been amazing the past few days. Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus," Dominick posted on X, referring to the US Cygnus spacecraft.
Dominick said he captured the footage using an Arri Zeiss 15mm, T1.8 lens with a 1/3 s exposure and a 1/2 s interval.
He also posted static photos from the aurora borealis he saw from space, showing the moon setting amid the lights.
He explained that while the image may look "upside down", that is how astronauts are usually oriented in their observation area aboard the spacecraft, and that images of this kind are generally rotated when posted on social media.
He did not specify what region of the Earth they were flying over. However, a solar storm over the weekend sparked auroras in both the northern and southern hemispheres. According to Scientific American, the northern lights appeared as far south as Texas and Mississippi.
Dominick, who is a NASA astronaut and a US Navy Commander, is serving a six-month term on board the International Space Station as a flight engineer.
He told Scientific American that he has been working on capturing time-lapse videos from the ISS for some time.
"It was intense," he told the publication. "I'm up here with a couple of veteran folks that have spent more than a year of their life in space across missions, and all of them have unanimously said they've never seen anything like it."
There are likely to be more chances to catch an aurora display in the coming years.
That's because our sun has an 11-year cycle in which it increases and decreases in activity. We're approaching solar maximum when the sun reaches peak activity. Experts have previously predicted this should happen in 2025.
While that may create more stunning auroras, it could also cause some problems on Earth.
As more sunspots appear on the surface of our star during its active period, it may prompt more solar storms, creating bursts of electromagnetic energy that can affect everything from the power grid to GPS signals.
We're not in any immediate danger, however. Physicists predict that this cycle will not be the biggest we've ever seen, and we're getting better at spotting storms to be able to prepare for them.