Earth art

Sometimes a bird's-eye view is what is needed to give those of us on the ground a little perspective. American astronaut Scott Kelly has been tweeting his spectacular photos from high above the Earth in the International Space Station (ISS).

Kelly has an artist's eye. His photos often look like abstract paintings with hues of fiery red and yellows and glowing pinks, blues and greens. They're a reminder of the diversity of the earth's landscapes ranging from arid deserts to tropical rainforests – and of humanity's impact on those landscapes.

Tweeting almost every day with the hashtags #EarthArt and #YearInSpace, Kelly sometimes asks followers to guess where over the world he is as part of a NASA geography competition. All of the astronaut's photos can also be found pinned to an interactive map.

The veteran astronaut, whose twin brother Mark was also in the same line of work, is around 100 days into a year-long mission with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko to better understand how the human body reacts to the harsh environment of space.

The effects aren't pretty. Long-term weightlessness causes muscle atrophy, bone loss, sleep disturbance and nasal congestion, which is probably good considering excess flatulence is another consequence of space flight. Still, those are some pretty spectacular photographs.