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ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet spent six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoyed looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows Morbihan, France, made from many pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage.
Thomas shared on his social media in French and English:
"Carte postale des Maldives ? Et non, il s’agit ici du Morbihan ! Vous vous demandez peut-être pourquoi certaines de mes photos sont découpées étrangement ? Il s’agit de photos composites +, qui consistent en la combinaison de deux ou plusieurs images différentes pour en créer une nouvelle, avec la meilleure résolution possible sur la plus grande superficie.Bien que cela semble simple, la création d'une de ces images est un processus qui peut prendre des heures, surtout quand il s’agit ici de rendre le paysage le plus fidèle à la réalité et le plus précis possible, bon week-end à vous !
Brittany is one of the rainiest regions in France, but Britons usually deny it ! Well here’s evidence that it’s sometimes very sunny (on a cloudless composite a couple dozens of my ISS pictures)"
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 used the longest lenses available onboard.