Beauty of the night: This image of Earth was captured at night. it was taken on 19 July and shows the cities of Iran and the Arabian Peninsula illuminated by moonlight

Tidal beauty: Hervey Bay (pictured) in Queensland, Australia was captured by astronauts on board the International Space Station on 3 August. The Strait is an estuary that separates the mainland coastline of the state of Queensland, Australia from neighbouring Fraser Island. The mainland side of the Strait includes the city of Hervey Bay, top centre

This image captures the smouldering Ambrym volcano, which was seen erupting in the Vanuatu archipelago east of Australia on 2 December. Ambrym is a volcanic island around 31 miles wide and is the fifth largest island in the country. The summit at the centre of the island is covered by a caldera, a cauldron-like volcanic feature that is formed when land collapses following an eruption. With the exception of human settlements, the rest of the island is covered by thick jungle

The stunning contrast in colours in this image shows O’Higgins Lake and glaciers in Chile. Nasa astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock said: ‘When you see the ice fields of Patagonia from space you are changed forever.’ The lake is the deepest in the Americas and has a maximum depth of 836 metres. Its milky light-blue colour is created by rock flour suspended in the lake’s waters and it is found near the O’Higgins Glacier

Here, tropical cyclone Typhoon Haiyan is pictured as it raged over the Philippines in November. The typhoon battered the country with winds up to 199mph. At times the storm was said to have stretched 372 miles across. According to UN officials, approximately 11million people were affected by the storms and many people in the regions of Visayas, particularly on Samar and Leyte, were left homeless

I heart planet Earth: The heart-shape in this stunning image is of the Small Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. The Aral Sea was one of the four largest lakes in the world with an area of 68,000 square kilometres. However, by 2007 it had declined to 10 per cent of its original size, splitting into four lakes including one smaller lake, pictured

A world away: here delicate white clouds are captured as they float across Namibia’s landscape. The Namib desert runs along the coast and rain in the area is rare. In the winter months the region sees hardly any cloud cover, except for the deep south where winter rains occur only once every couple of years

This tangle of lines is of the Niger River in Mali, Africa. It is shown winding through the landscape of Mali and the entire river follows a boomerang shape. Its source is just inland from the Atlantic Ocean, but the river runs away from the sea into the Sahara Desert. It then takes a sharp right turn near the ancient city of Timbuktu before heading southeast to the Gulf of Guinea

Astronauts even managed to captured the beauty to be found in agriculture. Here, sunlight can be seen reflected off irrigated farmland in Mexico, making the landscape almost look a little like a giant microchip

source:::::mail online.com UK

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