The Expedition 74 crew on the International Space Station turned into meteor chasers as Earth passed through a cloud of dust and small debris left behind by comet Thatcher in 1861.
Each year in mid-April, as some of these fragments enter Earth’s atmosphere, heating up and leaving a bright trail behind them, humankind looks up – or down, in the case of the Station’s crew – to catch of glimpse of these shooting stars.
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot set up a camera to automatically record thousands of images in the hope of catching a shooting star, an elusive event that often lasts only a fraction of a second. She successfully captured two on camera, and the images were combined into a timelapse, offering a beautiful, if accelerated, view of Earth at night from orbit.
“In scientific terms, a shooting star is actually a meteor: a tiny fragment of rock or dust from space that disintegrates as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, after travelling astronomical distances. For those with their heads full of dreams, seeing a shooting star often feels like the perfect moment to make a wish… just in case!” says Sophie.
The brightest meteors, which can appear to tear across the sky, are known as bolides. The colour of their trail depends both on the chemical composition of the meteoroid and on the altitude at which the phenomenon occurs.
The next meteor showers, visible both from the ground and orbit, are the ongoing Eta Aquariids and the Perseids, which peak in mid-August.