Polynesia collage

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station on his Proxima mission. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures was taken on 16 March 2017 and shows the Polynesian islands of Taha'a and Raiatea.

Thomas asked to have the series of highly zoomed pictures aligned into this collage to show the city in detail. The International Space Station flies at roughly 400 km altitude so Thomas used the longest lens available onboard: 1150 mm.

Thomas took 48 photos of the islands. On the ground, the images were digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage.