NASA astronaut Christina Koch shares view of meteor shower, northern lights from space
Astronaut Christina Koch shared what a meteor shower and the northern lights look like from space.
Koch, who graduated from North Carolina State University, posted a photo on her Twitter account Monday showing the two phenomenons from the view of the International Space Station.
“Can you see shooting starts from space? Turns out, yes! The first meteor shower of the decade and we were lucky enough to catch it from the @Space_Station along with the northern lights,” she tweeted along with the photo.
She wrote that the photo is a “composite image” of a few of the Quadrantid meteors.
The Quadrantid meteor shower usually peaks around early January and is one of the best of the year, according to NASA. But, unlike other meteor showers, it only peaks for a few hours.
This year, it peaked Friday night and Saturday morning, according to NASA.
During the shower’s peak and under “perfect conditions,” 60 to 200 Quadrantids can be seen in an hour, NASA says.
The photo Koch shared was retweeted more than a thousand times as of Monday afternoon and had more than 100 comments, mostly from people in awe of the photo.
“Jealous of the view,” one user Tweeted in response. “Simply astonishing.”
Koch recently broke the record for the longest space flight by a woman on her 289th day in space, where she is expected to stay for 328 days, The News & Observer reported.
She’s also done four space walks and was part of the first all-women space walk in October 2019.
This story was originally published January 6, 2020 at 6:59 PM with the headline "NASA astronaut Christina Koch shares view of meteor shower, northern lights from space."
