Lyrid Meteor Shower Seen from the International Space Station (VIDEO)

 
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The Lyrid meteor shower that peaked on April 21, 2012, is caught here on film by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. The footage captures the sight of the meteors burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The image above is a screen capture of the video below taken on April 22, 2012 at 5:34:22 UT. The International Space Station position was over 88.5 W, 19.9 N at an altitude of 392 km.

Astronaut Don Pettit filmed the footage, while fellow astronaut Bill Cooke mapped the meteors against the star field to confirm their origin.

The electric lights in the video are from Florida, Cuba, the Keys, and the Gulf Coast. There are also some lightning flashes occurring in the video, as well as the aurora borealis.

Here’s the video (if you can’t view it here for some reason, you can view it on NASA’s site):

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The astronauts that made the video are hoping to combine it with ground observations, and footage taken from a weather balloon, all taken at the same time. This will allow them to “test ideas and algorithms for processing data gathered by future space-based meteor observatories.”

Source: NASA

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