Astronauts show you the night view of Earth's cities from space

According to the British "Daily Mail" reported that the pictures in the article are astronauts on the International Space Station to see the Earth at night, if viewed from the distant space, the British capital of London, it seems more like a charming constellation than a city on Earth. The picture of London is astronaut Donald. It was taken by Donald Pettit during his last mission to the space station at around 7:22 p.m. on Feb. 4, 2003, ona cloudy day in London. Later this week, Pettit will fly into space for the second time aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. The astronaut is no doubt looking forward to taking more amazing pictures.

The southern section of the M25 ring road is most visible in the image, with the darkened Thames estuary fanning out to the east and the heavily lit black depression to the west of Hyde Park and Regent's Park in central London. Pettit began to press the shutter after setting up a special camera mount, a piece of equipment on the space station called the Revolving Door Tracker. Astronomers on the ground often take pictures of the stars with a revolving gate tracker to compensate for the rotation of the Earth relative to the stars. But in Pettit's hands, the device is used to compensate for the station's movement relative to the Earth below. During the long exposure, the revolving door tracker helped him lock the target city in the same place, thus taking detailed pictures.