Extraordinary pictures of Earth taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS) have been released by the European Space Agency (ESA).



German astronaut Alexander Gerst fitted the aircraft with cameras during his 165-day stint in orbit in 2014. While conducting scientific experiments or docking spacecraft Alexander would set cameras to automatically take photographs at regular intervals.



After returning to Earth in November the 38-year-old compiled 12,500 of the photographs into a timelapse video.



Gerst and colleagues landed in Kazakhstan at the end of their five-month Blue Dot mission.

Reuters