Baghdad in big

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet spent six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha in 2021. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoyed looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth.

This collage of pictures shows Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, made from many pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. 

Thomas shared on his social media: 

"Baghdad! On the picture where the airport is, there’s a big structure close to an artificial lake: Saddam Hussein’s former palace!"

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.