A Russian Cosmonaut has captured an
incredible video of the moon seemingly disappearing into thin air against the
Earth's atmosphere. Images show Earth's natural satellite looming close up
before it appears to move towards the planet's atmosphere until it shifts out
of sight. The moonset was filmed by Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Oleg
Germanovich Artemyev while orbiting Earth on the International Space Station.
Moonsets are seen multiple times a day
by astronauts and Cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) - a
science laboratory that orbits 250 miles (400km) above Earth.
The cosmic events occur when the moon
disappears below Earth's horizon while the satellite is viewed from beyond our
planet's atmosphere.
The ISS travels in orbit at high speed,
so the crew sees a series of sunsets, sunrises, moonsets and moonrises each
day.
Mr Artemyev regularly posts videos to
his 200,000 Instagram followers. He was enjoying his third expedition to space
when he recorded the images, having reached the ISS travelling aboard the Soyuz
MS-08 last month.
Mr Artemyev, 47, posted the video to
Instagram, writing: 'So I tried to make video [sic] of #moonset for the first
time.' This special visual effect has
wowed social media users.
Instagram user 'kavunovanatali' wrote:
'Thank you for the opportunity to see the vast cosmos and this incredibly
beautiful phenomena.' User 'tanya.kurganova' wrote: 'Thank you for making such
posts, it is very cool to look at what the astronaut's eyes see.'
Mr Artemyev was a Flight Engineer of
Expedition 39 and 40 to the International Space Station, and in 2018 he
returned to space as the Commander of Soyuz MS-08.
A video posted to his Twitter account
last month showed a SpaceX cargo ship careening through space with Earth in the
background. Mr Artemyev wrote: 'The SpaceX Dragon CRS-14 cargo ship after
undocking from the Space Station.'