Lens Flare

This is one of those images that I find absolutely entrancing, but I’m not sure everyone would “get it”. It’s not the most fantastic on-orbit image I’ve seen, and in fact, the sun is lighting every possible imperfection in the glass, but that’s part of what makes it for me — the “lens flare” effect. Except this isn’t Photoshop, or one of innumerable science fiction anthology covers. It’s the sun! I love the purple rays shooting out (and the rainbows.)

S131-E-007752 (7 April 2010) — The station’s robotic Canadarm2 grapples the Leonardo Multi-purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) from the payload bay of the docked space shuttle Discovery (STS-131) for relocation to a port on the Harmony node of the International Space Station. The bright sun and Earth’s horizon provide the backdrop for the scene. Canadian-built Dextre, also known as the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (SPDM), is visible at bottom center.

There’s poetry beyond measure in this picture. The brightness of the sun, the span of the rays, the color coming from white… the immense expanse of black, the curve of blue that represents air and life and all of our tiny selves… so caught up and distracted by everything, when our lives are just a vapor. Dust, dandelion fluff. And the sun will keep beaming forth light and color, long after we’re gone.