First-Ever Astronaut Interview From the ISS Focuses Heavily on Astrophotography

The picturesque view from the cupola in the International Space Station (ISS) is iconic — it has been in photos and videos countless times. However, it had never been the location for a live interview, at least until this week.

Scientific American‘s Rachel Feltman, host of the publication’s Science Quickly podcast, chatted live with NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick as he floated in the ISS’ cupola. Dominick has had a whirlwind summer in space, capturing beautiful and creative photos, including one of the most incredible self-portraits ever captured in space, and even sharing free astrophotography lessons on X, formerly known as Twitter, from the ISS.

Photography is the primary focus of Feltman and Dominick’s chat, seen below, with Dominick dishing on his photographic history and what it’s like to take “photos of space, from space.”

During the interview, Dominick is positioned in the seven-windowed dome at the bottom of the ISS. This means that Dominick appears upside-down as the space station orbits Earth. As Dominick and Feltman chat, viewers can watch the lighting conditions change during sunset.

“In the view right now, you’re seeing three or four of those [seven] windows. And as we go through this conversation, we get to see a dynamic event, which is sunset,” Dominick says. “I could take days and days to describe it, which is one of the reasons that drives me to do so much photography, just try to capture what we see.”

Dominick also details a new addition to the cupola: some neutral-density filters to cover the windows.

“For photography nerds, these are four-stop [filters],” he explains. He says these filters help expose photos that show both the inside of the cupola and the view of Earth and space beyond. These filters helped make the live video interview possible.

“Speaking of photography nerds, you’re an engineer, a pilot, and of course an astronaut, but you’re also a prolific photographer,” Feltman says, asking Dominick how he got so into photography.

The moon setting over the Pacific.

Went to the cupola to shoot Tropical Storm Hone near Hawaii but right after we passed by the storm the moon started to set.

400mm, ISO 500, 1/20000s shutter speed, f2.8, cropped, denoised. pic.twitter.com/YtboVnRNpF

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) August 24, 2024

“When I was young, my dad was a photographer and a journalist, and producer/director for local stuff in Colorado. He actually started doing that in the Air Force. He was a photographer; ran a motion picture unit for the United States Air Force,” recalls Dominick.

“Just seeing how he took photographs and how he composed things and cropped things and set up shots, I didn’t do a lot of it growing up, but I was around it. Joining NASA, we’re trained by our photo/tv department about how to take pictures.”

Dominick explains that during pivotal moments of his journey into space, he found himself wanting to capture so much of what he saw.

“I feel immense responsibility to share what we see. So few people are lucky enough to come up into space, I feel an immense obligation to take pictures and share everything we see with the world.”

Timelapse of the moon setting into streams of red and green aurora followed by a sunrise lighting up Soyuz with a light blue.

The aurora have been amazing the past few days. Great timing for trying out a new lens that recently arrived on Cygnus.

15mm, T1.8, 1/3s exposure,… pic.twitter.com/otFv5pZ6vd

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) August 12, 2024

“With the tools we have, the cameras we have up here, doing my absolute best to share what we see with the world.”

While there are unique challenges to photographing from space, including highly varied, dynamic light, there are also special benefits. For example, aboard the ISS, Dominick and other astronauts get to see 16 or 17 “golden hours” daily due to the speed of the ISS as it orbits Earth.

“We’re making a lap around the Erath every 90 minutes, so if I don’t get the lighting right or the setup right on a pass, I can wait 90 minutes and get a chance to do it again,” he says.

One of the most significant difficulties of shooting aboard the ISS is dealing with reflections on windows. Photographers like Dominick have tools to help, like large shrouds to put around their cameras or troublesome lights, but it’s a constant battle. They must also contend with movement, which means using fast shutter speeds.

“Folks who do astrophotography on Earth might be able to expose 10, 15 seconds without seeing star trails depending on what lenses they’re using,” says Dominick. At the ISS’ speeds, he sees streaks with a half-second exposure, even when using a wide-angle lens. That’s a significant difference.

A self-admitted camera gear nerd, Dominick has lots of fantastic toys to play with in space, including full-frame Nikon mirrorless cameras, like the Nikon Z9. Some non-Nikon lenses are up there, including a Tamron 50-500mm telephoto zoom and one of Dominick’s favorites, a 15mm T1.8 cinema lens. This 15mm lens arrived as a cargo shipment to the ISS in early August.

We received a cargo shipment this week with lots of cool stuff to include some new camera lenses . . . spent a good part of the weekend with a 15mm, T1.8 lens. Made a whole bunch of timelapses. Still looking though 1000s of frames, lots of which have aurora but the milky way in… pic.twitter.com/IyCZgE7yF9

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) August 11, 2024

I showed this to a couple of friends yesterday to see what they thought. They both thought it was a meteor exploding in the atmosphere – a rather bright one called a bolide. Timelapse is slowed down to one frame per second for you to see it streaking and then exploding.

If you… pic.twitter.com/tn2KmWgnoE

— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) September 3, 2024

Feltman and Dominick discuss much more about photography in the complete, nearly 20-minute interview, including details about Dominick’s NASA photography training, the type of photos he enjoys taking aboard the ISS, his favorite shots, and what life is like on the ISS.

Image credits: Featured image is a still frame from Scientific American’s video.