Electric Eye of Cyclone Bansi in the Indian Ocean

Though these images may look like they come from a science fiction movie, they are in fact photographs of tropical cyclone Bansi as seen at night by astronauts on the ISS on January 12, 2015. The images were taken when the ISS was east of Madagascar. The dim swirl of the cloud bands covers the ocean surface in both night images. The eye of the cyclone is brilliantly lit by lightning in or near the eye wall. The low-light settings of the camera used to take the image accentuate the contrast.

In the left image, the camera also accentuates the yellow-green airglow above Earth’s limb, an atmospheric phenomenon frequently reported by astronauts. Stars appear above the airglow layer, and the solar panels of a docked Russian spacecraft jut into the upper left of the image.

See NASA Earth Observatory