The ISS astronauts are good at many things, and photography is certainly one of them. NASA recently published a magical photo of a crescent moon, taken up there from the ISS using a Nikon D5.
In the photo, you can see the crescent Moon hovering above an orbital sunset. It was taken on 6 December 2021 as the space station passed over the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. So far, we’ve seen many photos taken by Thomas Pesquet, who is now here on Earth. But NASA doesn’t share who pressed the shutter this time.
Still, NASA has shared other information that you may be interested in. I know I find it quite interesting to see that astronauts use “normal” gear like us here on Earth. On the ISS website, NASA shares details and metadata of each image. So, we can see that this one was shot with a Nikon D5 and a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II at 200mm.
“Astronaut photography is not limited to views of Earth,” NASA writes. “NASA’s handheld astronaut photography began with the Gemini missions in the 1960s and continues today.” After all, we’ve seen some darn good photographers among astronauts. “The tradition of handheld astronaut photography will continue when the Artemis Program returns humans to the Moon.” I honestly can’t wait to see those photos! [via PopPhoto; image credits: NASA]
