Beauty from Above: Aurora Borealis

Scott Kelly, an astronaut at NASA, wanted to show the world how it looks like to witness the aurora borealis. He shared footage with the beauty from above, filmed from the International Space Station (ISS), showing us “land lovers” how it feels like to see such wonders.

Kelly uploaded the video on his Twitter account, after having spent 141 days on ISS. He uploaded the video with the comment “Another pass through Aurora. The sun is very active today, apparently.”

The Verge reported that Scott Kelly and his Russian companion Mikhail Kornienko have almost reached the half of their destination, having to spend another half year on ISS. Kelly is trying to keep Earth up to date, and he might have also found a way to make time pass by swiftly, by adding photos about his experience every day.

In previous posts he has shown the Suez Canal, the pyramids of Egypt and even the Perseid meteor shower that was last week’s top space attraction. Needless to say, those were not Kelly’s only posts. He posted a lot more and lot more is still to come.

But Kelly is not the only astronaut with entertaining ideas on ISS. One of his colleagues, Terry Virts, also posted a video gone viral about the aurora borealis captured from the ISS. That video’s special feature is that you can see how bright the lights from Earth are, even at thousands of miles away from the ground.

The aurora borealis is a result of collisions between particles that are charged with electricity and come from the sun which enter Earth’s atmosphere. These lights can only be seen above the poles in the northern and southern hemispheres.

For general knowledge, we know that Kelly has shown us the aurora from the North Pole because of its name: borealis. If he were to have shown us the South Pole, the name would have been aurora australis.

Either way, it is fascinating that Kelly and his colleagues are delighting us with their astonishing views and we sure do hope that we are going to see more from their exciting adventures. We also hope that they will finish their journeys safely so that they can come back in the arms of loving families and to an Earth that will show them its gratitude.