Astronauts snap lunar eclipse from International Space Station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured the super flower blood moon lunar eclipse on Wednesday, May 26, as they hurtled around the planet at 17,900 mph (8 kps). The space station, orbiting at the altitude of 260 miles (400 km), completes one round around Earth in about 90 minutes, which means the astronauts must have gotten a shorter glimpse of the celestial spectacle than stargazers on Earth. The advantage of the space-based vantage point, however, was the perfectly cloudless sky.

Wednesday’s eclipse, the only total lunar eclipse of 2021, was best observable from the Pacific region including Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Papua New Guinea, but skywatchers in the western part of the Americas and eastern Asia got to enjoy at least some parts of it, even though many observers were left disappointed by cloudy weather at their location. — Tereza Pultarova