Nasa astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn shared this photo of Mt Taranaki on Twitter

Mt Taranaki has now achieved international social media stardom becoming one of the first images "tweeted" from space.

Nasa astronaut Thomas Marshburn took a photo of the mountain from the International Space Station and then shared the photo with his 13,000 followers on Twitter.

"More volcano-spotting!

"Mt Taranaki on New Zealand's North Island served as the backdrop in the movie The Last Samurai," Marshburn wrote.

Saturday's Mt Taranaki picture is not the first Earth landmark to be tweeted by the astronaut.

On the same day he sent out a picture of a smoking volcano on Kyushu Island in southern Japan. Before that it was the Gobi desert and the Red Sea.

He also tweets pictures of life on the space station.

Twitter is a social media website that allows people to send "tweets" of up to 140 characters to all those who follow them.

They can also attach pictures and links to websites to their tweets.