The waxing crescent moon was recently captured beautifully by NASA’s International Space Station. NASA reported that the image was taken on September 30, when the International Space Station (ISS) was orbiting 267 miles (429 km) above the Atlantic Ocean southwest of South Africa during an orbital sunrise.
The moon is depicted with a beautiful series of colours that, broadly speaking, represent different layers of the atmosphere. According to NASA, this edge-on perspective of Earth gives us a glimpse inside the layers of our vibrant atmosphere.
In their Instagram post, the US space agency described the fascinating picture and wrote, ”The blackness of space takes up three-quarters of the top half of the image with the crescent Moon captured in the center of the image.” The caption continued to explain the colours seen in the image, “Below the Moon, the blackness fades into the atmosphere of Earth: a deep blue, then into white, then into orange, and back to black on Earth’s surface.”
Just above the dark limb of the Earth’s surface, at the bottom, is the troposphere seen in the shade of orange. We live in this layer, which is the lowest layer of the earth’s atmosphere. The white stratosphere, which is 22 miles (35 km) thick, is situated above it the orange troposphere. It has the ozone layer, which shields us from ultraviolet radiation’s (UV) damaging rays. Gradually giving way to space’s darkness is the mesosphere’s light blue hue. “The mesosphere is where meteors burn up during meteor showers due to the abundance of gases present that cause friction and heat,” NASA explained.
This post by NASA has amassed over one million likes and over 2000 comments. One user wrote, “Omg it’s just so beautiful up there.” A second user commented, “I love when NASA does NASA things.” Another comment read, “Wonderful moment to capture!”
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently released a stunning image of a “mysterious cosmic keyhole.” The NGC 1999 reflection nebula, which is 1,350 light-years away from Earth and is located in the constellation Orion, was photographed by the telescope.
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