The UK under a curtain of aurora

In this image we see the young lunar crescent as seen from the International Space Station by ESA astronaut Tim Peake on 9 February 2016. At the time of the photograph the Moon was just 1.2 days old. Features on the Earth-facing side of the Moon not directly illuminated by the Sun are glowing softly due to earthshine, light reflected onto the Moon from our planet.

British astronaut Tim Peake, along with Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko and outgoing space station skipper Tim Kopra, departed the International Space Station today aboard the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule and landed safely in Kazakhstan at 1016 BST (0916 GMT).

On 15th March, a coronal mass ejection from the Sun launched a torrent of charged particles in the direction of Earth. The gaseous cloud collided with our planet’s magnetic field two days later, generating this glorious, shimmering auroral curtain over Iceland photographed by Carlos Gauna.