blue origin launched its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket for the first time last week, and news sites and social media rushed to share dramatic images of the 98-meter-tall rocket heading into the skies.
At the same time, NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured the launch in a long exposure from the International Space Station (ISS) about 400 miles above Earth. The result is a rocket launch photo unlike any you’ve seen before:
Sharing the image on a post on XPettit, who arrived at the orbital outpost in September, explained that it was captured over a four-minute period, which explains the star trails that dominate the image. With Earth at the bottom, the New Glenn rocket is visible as a faint streak crossing the image from the bottom right to the top left.
“This was not an easy photograph to take,” Pettit wrote, adding that the space station was over Oklahoma at the beginning of the exhibit and over the center of the Gulf of Mexico at the end.
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Pettit has earned a reputation for his impressive photographic work during four orbit missions over the past two decades. The experienced astronaut especially likes shots full of star trails, but this appears to be the first time he’s been lucky enough to include a rocket launch in one.
Other notable images from Pettit’s current mission to the ISS include one showing a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. running back to earthand another sample the bright glow of an aurora on Earth.
Always looking for a striking scene, he also captured this awesome image of waterwayswhich he described as “flowing silver snakes.”
Pettit recently took some time to talk about his photography work in an interview from the space station
