Breathtaking Photo Shows ISS Astronaut's View of Nearby Galaxies

A new photograph shared by NASA offers a peek at the breathtaking views seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The image shows off Earth's colorful airglow as well as two nearby galaxies, together dubbed the Magellanic Clouds, just outside of our own cosmic neighborhood.

American astronaut Don Pettit snapped the image last week from the window of a docked SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule as the ISS passed over the Pacific Ocean. Pettit is known for his orbital astrophotography, which depicts everything from star trails streaking past Earth beneath a docked Soyuz vehicle to the network of city lights that make up this sparkling nighttime aerial view of Chicago. On Wednesday, Pettit shared the image above, saying it was a long exposure made "using a homemade tracker that cancels ISS motion."

In the bottom half of the photo lies Earth in motion, as well as its bright orange airglow—the layer of light produced by chemical reactions in Earth's upper atmosphere. Above that airglow are two seemingly distant galaxies: the Large Magellanic Cloud (left) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (right). In actuality, these dwarf satellite galaxies are the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud is roughly 160,000 light-years away, while the Small Magellanic Cloud is 200,000 light-years away. For context, our closest major galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy at a whopping 2.9 million light-years from the Milky Way.

On Earth, the Magellanic Clouds can only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere (though they're so bright that they're visible to the unaided eye). But aboard the ISS, astronauts can catch a view of the galaxy duo whenever the station crosses into the nighttime Southern Hemisphere. Under the right conditions, this can mean multiple Magellanic Cloud sightings in a single day.

From his Crew Dragon window, Pettit also captured a stunning image of the Milky Way, which NASA shared via X (formerly Twitter) last week. The image depicts a smattering of the galaxy's billions of stars, as well as a fainter airglow and an Earth blanketed with soft green light.