Airplanes are comparably large vehicles but they look small when you look at them flying in the sky. Think how the aircraft would look from outer space.
A photo taken by an unnamed astronaut stationed at the International Space Station (ISS) gives the idea how airplanes can be very small from the vantage point of the orbiting laboratory.
The photo, which was just released by NASA, shows a fuzzy image of an airplane flying over the Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas.
The aircraft is not easily seen at first glance because it looks so small. It can only be seen when the image is zoomed in and appears as a white silhouette against the ocean.
The astronaut, who took the photo using a Nikon D4 digital camera with 1150mm lens, was not actually targeting the plane for the image.
"Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this detailed image of small island cays in the tropical waters of the Bahamas, with the prominent tidal channels cutting between them," NASA said. "The image is so detailed that a single aircraft can be seen in the high resolution image trailing twin condensation trails (arrow)."
The U.S. space agency said that the strings of cays, which stretch 8.9 miles in the image, are among the most recognizable points on the surface of the Earth for astronauts onboard the ISS.
The image was taken on July 19 when the ISS was being crewed by Expedition 44 and the space station orbited 250 miles above the island.
Capturing the photo is actually not an easy feat. Unlike on Earth, where anyone can take photos with virtually no problem, astronauts have to contend with weightlessness at the ISS.
"Thanks to the astronaut's steady hands in controlling a long lens in weightlessness, this photograph is detailed enough to show a single aircraft and its twin condensation trails," said a NASA spokesman.
The ISS, which has so far completed over 92,000 orbits of our planet, similarly appears tiny on Earth regardless that it is to date the largest artificial body in low Earth orbit.
Australian photographer Dylan O'Donnell managed to take an image of the station in front of the moon earlier this year using a Canon 70D camera that he attached to the rear cell of a Celestron 9.25″ telescope.
