NASA astronaut snaps spooky photo of SpaceX Dragon capsule from ISS (Image Credit: Space.com)
A SpaceX Dragon capsule looks a little ghostly in a new image taken from the space station.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit snapped a picture of the Crew Dragon Freedom after the Crew-9 mission, SpaceX‘s ninth operational astronaut effort for the agency, docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 29.
The black-and-white image shows the belly of the Dragon, including windows with filters on board to lessen the bright sun. “I like how the sun shines through the stitching, personifying the composition,” Pettit wrote Oct. 24 on X, formerly Twitter.
Pettit took the picture using a Nikon Z9 camera with a Nikon 8mm fisheye, at a quarter of a second exposure, f2.8 and ISO 3200. The image was adjusted with software for contrast, brightness and the black-and-white view, he added.
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The 69-year-old astronaut is on his fourth space mission, having racked up 370 days in orbit already before his Sept. 11 launch. Pettit didn’t fly on a Dragon, however; he rode a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS.
Prior to his launch, Pettit told Space.com that he’s been practicing photography regularly since his last mission in 2012-13, in which he took long-duration exposures from the ISS.
“We’ve got a number of new lenses on orbit that are optimized for nighttime imagery. I’m really looking forward to getting back on station and taking nighttime imagery to a new level,” Pettit said.
