Skip to main content

Gorgeous ISS capture shows Caribbean and curvature of Earth

NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn has shared a breathtaking image taken from the International Space Station (ISS) showing the curvature of Earth as well as part of the Caribbean.

A view of the Caribbean from the International Space Station.
NASA

Marshburn captured the photo during a spacewalk last month before sharing it on Twitter at the weekend.

Recommended Videos

In his tweet, the experienced astronaut described the Caribbean Sea, with its beautiful blue colors, as “a candidate for the second favorite view of the Earth from space,” adding that an astronaut’s favorite view is of course the one of their home nation.

A candidate for the second favorite view of the Earth from space: the Caribbean Sea, seen here during a spacewalk below the @JAXA_en external experiment platform. Everyone’s favorite view? Their home country! pic.twitter.com/5mvAGUbFKI

— Tom Marshburn (@astromarshburn) January 7, 2022

Those familiar with the Caribbean should be able to spot southeast Cuba at the bottom of Marshburn’s shot, though the country’s capital city of Havana is obscured by the station’s solar arrays.

The picture was captured around 250 miles above Earth, with the wide view showing off the curvature of Earth. As Marshburn points out in his tweet, the image also includes Japan’s external experiment platform, seen to the right of the photo.

Marshburn took the image during his fifth spacewalk, with his previous four taking place during ISS visits in 2013 and 2009. The American astronaut spent 6 hours and 32 minutes outside the station together with his colleague, Kayla Barron, who was on her very first spacewalk.

The pair arrived at the ISS in November along with NASA’s Raja Chari and Matthias Maurier of the European Space Agency. They’ll stay aboard the orbiting outpost for around six months, returning in late April.

While astronauts aboard the ISS spend most of their time working on science experiments, occasional spacewalks are also essential for maintaining and upgrading the station, with the unique vantage point also providing an excellent opportunity for Earth observation work and photo captures.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet regularly posted amazing Earth shots during a recent stay at the ISS, and he also took time out to explain the kind of planning required to capture the impressive images.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Gorgeous cotton candy clouds show how Hubble processes space images
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbours, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope might look like cotton candy, but in fact it's part of a nebula in a next door galaxy. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way which is around 160,000 light-years away, this nebula consists of dust and gas that glows in different colors which indicate different physical processes at work.

If you're curious about how Hubble produces such vivid and colorful images and whether the colors are real or not, it helps to understand how telescope cameras work. Unlike the camera on your phone, for example, Hubble doesn't just point at an object and snap an image. Instead, its instruments like the Wide Field Camera 3, which produced this image, take multiple observations of the same object using different filters.

Read more
James Webb spots a gorgeous glowing light show on Jupiter
Pullout of aurora observations on Jupiter

Here on Earth, we sometimes experience beautiful glowing auroras due to the sun's activity -- best known as the Northern Lights. But Earth isn't the only planet to experience this phenomenon, as auroras are also seen on planets like Mars and Neptune too. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning example of this phenomenon in action on Jupiter, where the light show of the auroras is hundreds of times brighter than it is on Earth.

Auroras happen when energetic particles from the sun interact with a planet's atmosphere, and they are typically seen around the planet's magnetic poles. Observing the effect on Jupiter is not only visually striking, but it is also a way for astronomers to learn about the huge and complex magnetosphere of Jupiter.

Read more
The ISS just dodged part of a 20-year-old Chinese rocket
The International Space Station.

The International Space Station (ISS) had to raise its orbit on Wednesday to reduce the risk of being struck by a piece of space junk.

The maneuver was carried out at 6:10 p.m. ET by firing the thrusters on the docked Progress 91 spacecraft for 3 minutes and 33 seconds, NASA said in a post on its website.

Read more