PARIS — Suspended 250 miles above Earth on Tuesday evening, Thomas Pesquet looked down on Europe. Through a little window he saw a dark blue continent, sparkling with golden stars and the aurora borealis in the background. He could pick out most of the cities by their lights.

“In the front #Berlin & in the back Belgium clearly distinguishes itself as usual,” he posted on Twitter along with a photo, which was shot above northeast Poland and looking at Warsaw and beyond to Western Europe.

Alone among the sea of star-shaped cities, one country glowed as a whole: Belgium. Paris may be the City of Light, but France as a whole, compared to its northern neighbor, seems to have been cast into darkness.