While illumination displays are popular attraction in cities across Japan throughout November and December, it looks like the best view comes from between 330 and 435 km away, on board the International Space Station!
NASA Astronauts J.R Stoces and Randy Bresnik took these incredible night-time images of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Hakodate during December 2017.
@Stu_Mundel Tokyo, Japan from the @Space_Station – Photo @AstroKomrade pic.twitter.com/0RY6rpxNs2
— J.R. Stoces (@RocketmanJRS) December 12, 2017
Good night from @Space_Station. Japan – Osaka, Tokyo, Nagoya, Sapporo, Hakodate. pic.twitter.com/P6QGh3FhGf
— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) December 11, 2017
The International Space Station or, ISS as it is commonly known, is a habitable artificial satellite which operates in low Earth orbit. The ISS serves as a research laboratory and has up to 6 crew on board at one time.
Traveling at 7.67 km/s the ISS orbits the earth 15.54 times a day taking mulitple routes. Why not check the ISS’s current location and see if you can spot it above your home town? The space station is the third brightest object in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. You can check it’s current location by using this link – http://www.isstracker.com/.
