NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick speaks with Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman about how he captures jaw-dropping images from space
. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Thank you. Matt, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today.I'm Rachel Feltman. I host Scientific American's podcast,. And yeah, my first question is where exactly are you calling in from? Because I understand it's a pretty big deal.We're trying out something new today.
But the cupola is really bright, and we recently got something shipped up to us called neutral density filters, and they’re these little films that we put over the windows. And for photography nerds these are four stops. So, these provide four stops of exposure change that we're able to put in front of the windows to help expose for pictures—if we want to take something, a picture of something both inside the cupola but also be able to see the Earth on the outside.
Folks like to take a lot of pictures of those times. And the lighting is just incredible. And we're lucky to get sixteen of those a day. You know, we're going 17,500 miles an hour. We're making a lap around the earth every 90 minutes. So if I don't get the lighting right or the setup right on a pass, I can wait 90 minutes and I'll get a chance to do it again.
So, it presents some unique challenges, but we have great instructors that teach us how to do it and it's a lot of fun.So much. I have so many cool toys. I'm a giant nerd. I'm willing to admit it. We recently, you know, we—I'm totally willing to admit it. And, you know, we've—it's a blast. We have an incredible set of equipment. In fact, these, we get new equipment all the time. This lens just came up maybe a month ago and a couple other lenses and so absolutely loving it.Tell me more about the training that you got specifically for space photography.
They also teach us technical photography. We are up here conducting research in science. And so sometimes you have to take technical photographs. To show the researchers on earth what you're doing or what they're the result of their experiment. So, you know, we do a lot of macro photography. We get in close and we have a whole set of lenses and lights to take pictures both inside the space station and outside the space station.
Actually, no, it wasn't that picture. Sorry. Shooting the Nile River. There's too many things to be excited about. I love shooting the Nile River at night or coming over Europe and seeing the Mediterranean and the Nile River. And we were coming up over Africa with lightning. And I love taking pictures of lightning.
Yeah. So, you're coming to the end of your mission on ISS. What's something that you're really going to miss when you're back on earth?So many things. I enjoy the short commute. I can wake up a couple of minutes before the start of the day and be out of my crew quarters and at work in just a couple of minutes. And I get to float to work, which is super awesome. I love flipping.
Oh, by the way, the lighting is amazing right now. We're just now going through sunset here. And one of my favorite things to watch is the lighting on people's faces. So I've turned off the internal lights in here so you can just watch the lighting on someone's face during a sunset. I love watching it on my crewmate's faces.Wow. Very cool.
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