• Question: What does the sunset look like from space?

    Asked by Eleanor to COLFlight on 10 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 10 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Hi Eleanor,
      the interesting thing about your question is that the sunset in space is very very quick.

      On Earth, the atmosphere acts as a lens and bends the sunlight, so even after the Sun is set, you still see light. This is also what produces those wonderful colors.

      In space, there is no atmosphere, so there is nothing to bend sun light (ok, maybe Earth gravity does, but that’s too small to have some visible effect). So once the Sun, it’s immediately dark! A sunset on the ISS really lasts around 1 minute: one moment you are in full light, the moment after you are in the dark. And since there is no atmosphere, you don’t see those wonderful colors…

      But there is one wonderful thing: when the sun is almost down, it still lits the Earth atmosphere below. So there is a moment when you can really appreciate how thin the atmosphere is.

      Check out this video, shot from the ISS one year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DkVoOHOsFE

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