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 the Great Wall of China, but it is hard to see, zoom in an explore to see if you spot it.
Thomas shared this image on social media with the caption:
"Everyone always asks whether it’s possible to see the Great Wall of China from space. It is not (sorry to disappoint) . But, if you know where to look, you can take a picture of it. It is impossible to see it in the tiny viewfinder of the camera (imagine the picture below in the size of a camera viewfinder), but using geographical features, you can navigate to where you think it should be and shoot it blind! With good guidance from our NASA instructor and with a bit of luck I got a few shots of it. The shots aren’t great, there was a lot of fog, but it’s still very visible in the middle."
Thomas asked to have the series of highly zoomed pictures aligned into this collage to show the river 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.