Incredible 'star trail' photographs taken by snap-happy astronaut 240 miles above Earth

It looks uncannily like a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s sci fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, showing travel through the stars at high speed.



Yet these stunning pictures are are real.



The amazing images were taken 240 miles above Earth from the International Space Station by Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit.

Incredible: Astronaut Don Pettit took these pictures 240 miles above Earth from the International Space Station

Known as ‘star trail’ pictures, they are taken over a period of 10-15 minutes by cameras mounted inside the station.

However, Pettit found that using the latest digital cameras meant that he had to combine several images to create the effect.



'My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes,' he said.

Star-trail images: Pettit achieved the pictures by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes then combining several images on top of one another

'However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image.



'To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then 'stack' them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure,' the astronaut explained.



A total of 46 images photographed by the astronaut-monitored stationary camera in the Cupola were combined to create this composite.

Stunning: A total of 46 images photographed by the astronaut-monitored stationary camera in the Cupola were combined to create this composite Spot the difference: Pettit's pictures look like images from sci fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is a still from the film

Success: Pettit, left, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, successfully entered the SpaceX Dragon capsule on Saturday. The Dragon is the world's first commercial spaceship

Pettit has taken hundreds of images during his time on the space station, including several of the Space Station’s most recent visitor, the SpaceX Dragon capsule.



He is one of six astronauts currently living aboard the station along with

fellow NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, European astronaut Andre Kuipers, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.

