"Okay, where's my camera? I gotta record that."
Stars, from space. Credit: Don Pettit/NASA
Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
NASA Astronaut Don Pettit returned to Earth 10 days ago, landing in Kazakhstan. During his latest mission, his third long-duration on the International Space Station, Pettit brought his brand of wonderment to the assignment.
During his time in microgravity, Pettit, an inveterate tinkerer, said he likes to spend his free time either doing experiments in microgravity he cannot do on Earth or taking images to bring the experience back home. At a news conference Monday, Pettit was asked why he took so many images—670,000!—during his most recent stay on the space station.
"When I'm looking out the window, just enjoying the view, it's like, 'Oh, wow, a meteor. Look at that. Man, there's a flash there. What's that? Oh, look at that volcano going off. Okay, where's my camera? I gotta record that.' And part of this drive for me is when your mission is over, it's photographs and memories. When you want to share the experience with people, you can share the memories through verbal communication, like we're doing now, but the photographs are just another dimension of sharing what it's like. It's an experience where most people on Earth right now can't share, and I can try to give them a glimpse through my imagery."
It would be almost impossible to pick just a single photo of Pettit's to share this week in the Tuesday Telescope, but I've selected this one for several reasons. First, it's beautiful, and the framing through the Dragon spacecraft window is lovely. It also shows stars from the vantage point in space. Pettit built his own star tracker, of course, to make this happen. And finally, Earth's atmosphere is a showstopper by itself.
Anyway, thank you, Don Pettit, for all of the beauty and wonderment you've brought back from space. Most of us will, indeed, never go. But you've brought us all that little bit closer.
Source: Don Pettit/NASA
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