Space

See gorgeous green auroras dance over Earth in dazzling ISS astronaut video

April 11, 2025

Earth’s auroras look a bit different from above.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured two amazing videos of our planet’s natural light shows from the International Space Station (ISS) last week.

One of them, which he posted to the social media site X on April 4, shows the auroras, also known as the southern lights dancing below the orbiting lab as it flew above the chilly waters between Australia and Antarctica.

view from orbit of green auroras shining over earth (Image credit: Don Pettit/NASA)

The other video, which Pettit posted on April 5, shows stunning “green vaporous turbulence” above a patch of the planet that the astronaut does not identify.

Related: ISS astronaut captures green auroras dancing over city lights (video)

Pettit, 69, is NASA’s oldest active astronaut. He’s known to space enthusiasts for his off-Earth photography and experiments, which he frequently shares with the public via X.

For example, last October, Pettit used food coloring to make a small sphere of water look like a gas-giant planet, complete with striking cloud bands. And a month later, he snapped a photo of the sixth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket, capturing the trail the huge vehicle left in Earth’s atmosphere.

Pettit arrived at the ISS in September aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with two cosmonaut colleagues, Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. The trio are expected to return to Earth later this month.

The current ISS mission is the fourth for Pettit. He lived aboard the orbiting lab for long stretches from 2002 to 2003 and 2011 to 2012, and also flew a two-week mission to the station in 2008.

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