Warm Regards

A Space Station group portrait, taken in thermal infrared.

If Matisse and Van Gogh worked together to make a portrait of the Expedition 31 crew, this is what it might look like: Left to right in the first image are Joe Acaba, Gennady Padalka, Oleg Kononenko, Sergey Revin, and André Kuipers (I was running the camera).

This is how our crew looks in thermal infrared.

The thermal camera I used operates in the far infrared, with wavelengths around 10 microns, which is close to body temperature. I was using it to image the window heater in the Cupola, and played around with it a bit before putting it away. Note that regular glass is not transparent in thermal infared, so glasses look like mirrors (and so do our windows).

Self-portrait reflected in the Cupola window.

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