The photographs were clicked using color settings that accentuated the contrast between the cloud swirl and the brightly lit portion.
Strong winds, massive waves, and thunder with lightning during a storm together make for a terrifying sight for someone facing such extreme weather on Earth. But the same could turn into a spectacular sight if observed from a safe distance up in space. This is why when the Expedition 42 crew observed a cyclone near Madagascar from the International Space Station in 2015, they saw the eye of the storm glowing bright with lighting.
The astronauts used a Nikon D4 digital camera with a 28-millimeter lens to snap two striking photographs of the “electric eye,” which turned out to be the eye of the tropical cyclone “Bansi,” as reported by NASA Earth Observatory. Bansi first took shape in the southwestern Indian Ocean on January 11, 2015. The stormy hurricane gushed for eight days, moving from Madagascar to the Indian Ocean, and finally dissipating in Mauritius. According to Live Science, it then headed back towards the French island Réunion. By the time astronauts clicked these photographs, cyclone Bansi had reached its strength with sustained winds blowing at 115 miles per hour.
Eventually, by January 19, the cyclone reached its Category 4 strength, which, according to the National Hurricane Center, means that the maximum sustained winds were moving at about 157 miles per hour or higher, resulting in catastrophic damage. But on January 13, a day after the photos were taken, the eye of the storm was around 12 miles away, as per Live Science. According to NOAA, an eye of the cyclone usually appears when the maximum sustained wind speeds go above 74 miles per hour.
A cyclone's structure normally consists of three parts, namely the rainbands, the eyewall, and the eye. The cause of the formation of the eye is not evident but is probably linked to a combination of angular momentum and centrifugal force. People seeing the eye of the cyclone at night usually witness stars or birds or ships trapped in the swirl of water. In both photographs, a dim vortex of clouds appears to cover the surface of the ocean while the eye of the cyclone stands out, brilliantly lit by lighting. NASA explained that the astronauts used the camera’s low-light settings to accentuate the contrast between the dim and the glowing portions.
In the cyclone Bansi's second image, a soft golden-yellow-green glow also appears at the rim of the Earth. This is a natural phenomenon called “airglow,” which Live Science describes as an aurora-like phenomenon that occurs when gases such as oxygen and nitrogen are excited by charged particles and ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Airglow is most commonly observed around the solar maximum, the most active phase in the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle. Just before Bansi's formation, a solar maximum had peaked sometime in 2014, which explains the airglow accompanying the cyclone. Apart from the airglow, the photographs show smatterings of sparkly stars as well as the solar panels of a Russian spacecraft.
The photographs called “ISS042-E-135015” and “ISS042-E-135030” respectively, were released by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center, after basic editing, cropping, and enhancing to accentuate contrast.
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