Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this digital photograph of the eye of Hurricane Igor at 10:56 Atlantic Daylight Time (13:56 UTC) on September 14, 2010. The storm was a category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity.
At the time of the image, Igor was centered in the Atlantic Ocean near 18° N 52° W and slowly moving west-northwest at 11 kilometers (7 miles) per hour, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Maximum sustained winds of 213 km (132 mi.) per hour, with gusts to 259 km (161 mi.) per hour.
Astronaut photograph ISS024-E-14580 was acquired on September 14, 2010, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera using a 180 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 24 crew.. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.
