Earth’s beauty “tweeted” from the lens of an astronaut

Canadian astronaut, Commander Chris Hadfield has shared some extraordinary photographs of Planet Earth. He is currently on board of the International Space Station (ISS) on a five months mission. He is also the first Canadian Commander of the ISS.

We have all admired the beauty of the universe rendered through the lenses of the machines man set free in and out of our Solar System, but none of them were… live tweeted. Chris Hadfield has joined the crew on the ISS on December 21, 2012, as part of Expedition 35. The Canadian astronaut caught the staggering beauty of Mother Earth with different cameras, such as Nikon D2 and D3. One of the largest lenses he used is a 400mm one. Beauty is hard to keep to one’s self, so he brought us the pleasure to see the amazing shots he took, by tweeting them on his personal account. If you want to follow him (we highly advise you to), you can find him @Cmdr_Hadfield. The photos Hadfield snapped vary, from snow covered rice fields in China, to exotic islands in the Philippines. Bellow are some of his images together with his Twitter captions.

Like a Hole Punch – confetti of farms using central irrigation in the American Southwest.

Corn rows of sand, tightly sculpted by wind, heat and time, Saudi Arabia.

Volcanoes look dramatic at dawn. They startled me when I spotted them through the lens.

A crazed stained glass mosaic – the winter black and white of farms in central Asia.

An island made for running laps. Off the coast of Indonesia.

Noctilucent Cloud – rare super high altitude cloud, barely visible from Earth, seen at dawn in the mesosphere from ISS.

Humans need straight lines, nature doesn’t. Indecisive river and orderly farmers, central Asia.

We live on a solar-powered spaceship, renewable energy means less fuel needs. Side benefit is the beauty of the arrays.

The Earth is a spinning kaleidoscope. Where in the world do you think this is?

According to BBC, the Canadian Space Agency has recently arranged a live session of tweets between William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek, and the astronaut Chris Hadfield, much to the fans’ delight.