After 69 years living among us, The Man Who Fell To Earth has returned home to space.

Belgian astronomers have paid tribute to late music legend David Bowie, giving him a seven-star constellation in the shape of the iconic lightning bolt seen across his face on the cover of his Aladdin Sane album.

Bowie died last week aged 69, after an 18-month battle with cancer.

The homage to Bowie, whose hits include Starman, Life on Mars and Space Oddity, sits — appropriately — in the vicinity of Mars.

Bowie first found success with the single Space Oddity, inspired by the international space race, and one of his most well-known personas was Ziggy Stardust, a bisexual alien rock star who wore outrageous costumes and had a shock of bright red hair.

"It was not easy to determine the appropriate stars," Philippe Mollet said. ( Supplied: DDB Brussels )

Belgian music station Studio Brussels and MIRA Public Observatory teamed up to register the constellation, which was recorded at the time of Bowie's death, in honour of the icon.

Philippe Mollet from the MIRA Observatory said "it was not easy to determine the appropriate stars".

"Studio Brussels asked us to give Bowie a unique place in the galaxy," he said.

"Referring to his various albums, we chose seven stars — Sigma Librae, Spica, Alpha Virginis, Zeta Centauri, SAA 204 132, and the Beta Sigma Octantis Trianguli Australis — in the vicinity of Mars.

"The constellation is a copy of the iconic Bowie lightning and was recorded at the exact time of his death."

The homage in the sky is linked to an online tribute project, Stardust for Bowie, which was developed by Google Sky.

The initiative allows fans to click on a space inside the virtual constellation, choose their favourite song and leave a short message, to create a tiny star in memory of Bowie.

As more and more people have shared their memories and created virtual stars, the constellation in the Google Sky galaxy has grown increasingly brighter.

The lightning-shaped David Bowie constellation near Mars. ( Supplied: DDB Brussels )

Bowie's final album Blackstar hits number one in the US

The United States, Bowie's adopted home, has paid its own tribute to him, with his final album, Blackstar, hitting number one in the country's music charts.

It was a posthumous feat that the British music legend never managed in life.

Blackstar, which was released two days before Bowie's death on January 10 from a secret battle with cancer, debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart for the week through to Thursday.

Amid the outpouring of mourning after his death, Bowie not only scored his first US number one album but became a rare artist to have two in the top five, with his greatest hits collection Best of Bowie, released in 2002, hitting number four.

Blackstar — which came out on Bowie's 69th birthday — immediately won critical acclaim for its experimentalism as the long-reinventing artist developed a hard jazz sound.

His death threw a whole new light on Blackstar as it emerged that he intended the album as a final artistic statement, full of meditative reflections on a half-century on the cutting edge of music.

Bowie spent the final two decades of his life living in New York and had said his first love was African-American music, especially funk and soul.

While Bowie cast a huge influence over US pop culture, he was generally considered an avant-garde artist and did not achieve the same mainstream success as in his native Britain.

Also re-entering the charts was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie's science-fiction concept album that was at number 21 last week, far higher than it charted after its release in 1972.

ABC/AFP