(Image: Scott Kelly/NASA)

This is what paradise looks like from space. But this view of the Bahamas isn’t only beautiful, it also highlights features that aren’t always visible from lower altitudes.

Captured from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, the image includes seafloor ripples in the lower right-hand corner, a result of moving sediment. They create turbulence in the layer of water just above the ocean bottom and can help predict how sediment will bury sunken objects or how contaminants will spread on the sea bed.


The puffy white cumulus clouds scattered around the image sit alongside the shadows they cast on the ocean surface below. Lying low in the atmosphere, they produce little or no rainfall, but can grow into larger, cumulonimbus clouds that float higher up and produce thunderstorms and torrential rain.

The darker blue streaks cutting between the land masses are channels of deeper water. “They are generated by strong currents between the islands,” says James McWilliams, an earth scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Snaps from the space station have also captured a peaceful view of a super-typhoon and many historical wonders, like the Acropolis in Athens. A collection of images captured by astronaut Chris Hadfield make bleak landscapes look like abstract art.

Kelly has been posting spectacular photos of Earth on his Twitter account almost every day, tagged as #YearInSpace.