Photo Credit: Tim Peake   Twitter: @astro_timpeake

The image above is by Timothy Peake from the International Space Station, Expedition 47 on January 20, 2016.  This aurora taken by the British astronaut Tim Peake gathers a great and pleasant mixture of aesthetics and science.  I found this image fascinating in particular because we (most likely) will never experience this with our own eyes.  And unlike most photos of auroras from Earth, this shows the lights (charged particles, or photons) emitting into space as the point of perspective is vastly different from Earth and can capture the true “lights.”   You can see the photons near earth are a greenish color and as you move up towards space the lights follow the visible light spectrum (going towards a lower wavelength) until the human eye can no longer see the emitted photons.  This is also visually appealing because of the multiple colors and contrast in dark and lights.  The lights from earth also add to this image and just thinking the people from those cities will see such a different image, and point of perspective really makes a difference.

• Zack Cymanski