Earth Matters

Sunrise to Sunset

January 15th, 2016 by Adam Voiland

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Photographs by Scott Kelly/NASA. Sunrise (upper); sunset (lower).

My colleagues and I spend most of our time looking for stories, images, and data related to the latest and greatest remote sensing science at NASA and beyond. This often leads us to rather technical scientific journals and obscure websites that are hardly known for their artistry.

But every now and then during the course of a workday, we stumble across an image that is simply so gorgeous that we can not resist sharing it. The first image above, tweeted from the International Space Station by astronaut Scott Kelly on January 13, captures the intense, raw beauty of a sunrise with an unforgettable gradient of yellow to red. About eight hours later, he tweeted the second image. “Day 292. Colors of #sunset. #GoodNight from @space_station! #YearInSpace,” Kelly said of the orange, teal, and blue horizontal lines that fade to black.

This was probably not Kelly’s only chance to capture a spectacular sunset and sunrise on January 13. The International Space Station travels at about 17,100 miles per hour, and orbits Earth about every 90 minutes—enough for astronauts to witness 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day.

“The sun truly ‘comes up like thunder,’ and it sets just as fast,” said Joseph Allen, an astronaut who logged more than 300 hours in space on the Space Shuttle in the 1980s. “Each sunrise and sunset lasts only a few seconds. But in that time you see at least eight different bands of color come and go, from a brilliant red to the brightest and deepest blue.”

Curious to see more sunsets and sunrises from space? In the image below, see how a sunset reveals different layers of the atmosphere. Learn more about the image here. See several more of Kelly’s sunrise and sunset photographs featured by The Atlantic here. And if you still want more space sunrises and sunsets, check out our archives.
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2 Responses to “Sunrise to Sunset”

  1. Farjana Yasmin says:

    Incredible…… And very beautiful

  2. cc says:

    Where did hurricane Alex 2016 go? After Azores, sitting in Atlantic, is she heading north, south, east or west. She reminds me of Sandy! Please send pictures if you have any, thank you, sincerely, cc. PS my family lived through Sandy, along with the 1942, 1962, and several others!