Staggering clips and photographs have captured the extraordinary beauty of the Northern Lights – from the vantage point of the International Space Station.
US astronaut Matthew Dominick shared the footage and pictures, taken over course of the last few days, via X.
One brief film shows an eerie green glow over the Earth’s horizon, with the ISS in the foreground.
Mr Dominick described it as “timelapse of the moon setting into streams of red and green aurora followed by a sunrise lighting up Soyuz with a light blue.
He continued: “The aurora have been amazing the past few days. Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus.”
In one stunning photo, the ISS basks in the light of what is also known as the aurora borealis.
Mr Dominick comments: “The moon makes it way towards the horizon to set amongst red and green aurora.
“I was setup in a different window and saw this through another window.
“I made a quick camera, camera mount, and shroud teardown and setup. Felt so lucky to grab this shot.”
The ISS has been in the news for different reasons this week, with NASA yesterday saying it was still deciding whether to keep two astronauts at the International Space Station until early next year and send their troubled Boeing capsule back empty.
Rather than flying Boeing’s Starliner back to Earth, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would catch a ride on SpaceX’s next flight. That option would keep them at the space station until next February.
The test pilots anticipated being away just a week or so when they rocketed away as Starliner’s first crew. But thruster failures and helium leaks marred the capsule’s trip to the space station, raising doubts about its ability to return safely and leaving the astronauts in limbo.
NASA officials said they are analysing more data before making a decision by end of next week or beginning of the next. These thrusters are crucial for holding the capsule in the right position when it comes time to descend from orbit.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations mission chief, said: “We’ve got time available before we bring Starliner home and we want to use that time wisely.”
NASA’s safety chief Russ DeLoach added: “We don’t have enough insight and data to make some sort of simple, black-and-white calculation.”
Mr DeLoach said the space agency wants to make room for all opinions, unlike what happened on NASA’s two shuttle tragedies, Challenger and Columbia, when dissenting views were ignored.
He said: “That may mean, at times, we don’t move very fast because we’re getting everything out, and I think you can kind of see that at play here.”.
Switching to SpaceX would require bumping two of the four astronauts assigned to the next ferry flight, currently targeted for late September. Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams would take the empty seats in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule once that half-year mission ends.
