Fish Stories from the ISS
Since he rocketed to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 29, 2014, American astronaut Reid Wiseman has been enjoying the sights. He has built an active following on Twitter by sharing photographs of a world he is seeing from space for the first time. Like many first-timers in space, he is also discovering some curiosities that most of us never see from the ground.
On August 18, he tweeted the following photo and comment: “Bangkok is the bright city. The green lights outside the city? No idea…”
Astute Twitter followers, journalists, and bloggers quickly pointed out that @astro_reid was most likely seeing fishing boats, which use bright lamps to draw plankton, squid, and fish to the surface. Several people even pointed to the Earth Observatory and our story about mysterious night lights off the coast of South America. It turns out that Wiseman’s fisherman also appear in the first three seconds of this time-lapse video shot from the ISS as it flew over eastern Asia in January 2014.
A few weeks ago, Wiseman had a similar experience looking out over Taiwan and the coast of China. “Could all those white lights off the coast of Taiwan be fishing boats? Hard to believe.”
Maybe Wiseman will spot some other strange lights, such as the mystery lights of the Australian Outback…the natural gas flares of the Dakotas…the contrail of a rocket…or gamma-ray rich lightning. The natural sights of the planet at night are far more compelling that any UFO stories.
