Hurricane Milton is closing in on Florida's west and as residents in the affected area prepare for its impact an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) passed safely by overhead and captured the monstrosity of a storm from space.
That NASA astronaut was Matthew Dominick, who took to his personal X account to share an incredible image and timelapse of Hurricane Milton as the International Space Station floated safely overhead at an altitude of approximately 250 miles. Both the image and the video showcase the immense scale of Milton and just how big of a hurricane Florida is about to get hit with.
It was only yesterday the National Weather Service Tampa Bay Area announced that if Milton kept its pace and reached landfall at its current intensity it would be the worst storm to hit the Tampa Bay area in the last 100 years. As for the footage from space, Dominick explained the ISS flew over Milton approximately 90 minutes before the image was uploaded.
For those camera fans out there, Dominick explained the timelapse video was captured with a "1/6400 sec exposure, 14mm, ISO 500, 0.5 sec interval, 30fps". One X user pointe d out an interesting fact about the Dominick's camera settings, with Brady Bowling writing, "Never realized how bright space must be to have to shoot at 1/6400 at f8 500 iso."
Dominick responded to the comment, writing, "Spot on observation. Fast shutter speed for both the bright light and to not have have motion blur in the image due to our orbital speed." Dominick was also asked is this why there are no stars visible in the background, "Yes. The stars are much much dimmer than the sunlight reflecting off the clouds. A typical daytime image like the one in this post is 1/6400 sec, f8, ISO 500 while a night time image with stars increases the exposure time, opens the aperture, and ups the ISO: 1.6s exposure, f1.4, ISO 12800."