Richat reassembled

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet spent six months on the International Space Station as part of his first mission Proxima. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows the Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of Sahara and Guelb er Richat, in the Sahara near Ouadane in west-central Mauritania, western Africa.

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

On the ground, the images were digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage.