Lago Maggiore grand

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows Lake Maggiore, Italy, made from around 42 pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. The pictures were taken on 23 June 2021 from 10:16 GMT.

Thomas asked to have the series of highly zoomed-in pictures aligned into this collage to show the area in detail. The International Space Station flies at roughly 400 km altitude so Thomas uses the longest lenses available onboard.

Pan and click on the plus sign on the image to zoom in, or use your fingers on a touchscreen to explore the image directly.