International Space Station photo
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We showed you what it looks like when astronauts dissolve an antacid tablet in a floating ball of water.

Now, they’ve taken it a step further, making life on the station a bit more colorful by adding food coloring to their otherwise bland floating balls of clear water. If the water and antacid reaction looked like a small cratered moon, these dyed orbs look like brightly colored planets, floating sedately through the weightless environment (the green ‘planet’ gets a bit of a cratered look when an astronaut adds an antacid tablets to the orb).

The astronauts weren’t just doing this for fun (though it is a fantastic side benefit). The videos demonstrate the usefulness of the Epic Dragon high-resolution camera, the same model of camera that was used to shoot the Hobbit films in incredible detail. Being able to capture detailed images of experiments in space allows scientists to get an even more detailed view of the processes going on in this weightless environment. These videos of bubbly colored water are a way for researchers to put the camera through its paces before setting it to monitor other, more intensive experiments.