EastEnders ...from space!

How London looks if you’re 250 miles up

MANY of us gaze up at the night sky and look at the stars in wonder.

And as this picture shows, it seems that looking back down at earth can be just as spectacular.

This incredible photograph of London was taken by astronauts on board the International Space Station, around 250 miles above the planet.

Looking not unlike a bigger and more impressive version of the opening titles of eastenders, the picture of the capital illuminated at nightfall was tweeted by Jessica Meir, who is part of Nasa’s expedition 61 currently aboard the ISS.

Brightly lit areas show the glow from Covent Garden, the West end and the shopping meccas of Regent Street and Oxford Street, and indicate where the financial hub of the City is located.

Roads branching out from the Thames, Canary Wharf and Hyde Park are clearly

‘Like spider webs or shattered glass’

visible, as is Tower Bridge which can be seen as a white line across the Thames.

Dr Meir, from Maine in the United States, captioned the photo: ‘Behold the bright lights of fair London town! Views of city lights from above evoke images of spider webs, shattered glass or fractal art.

‘Many fond memories with my relatives and friends in this lovely city, thinking of you all from low earth orbit.’

Dr Meir left earth for the ISS in September to work as a flight engineer, and performed her first spacewalk in October to replace a faulty battery charging unit.

The 42-year-old is expected to return to earth some time in the spring of next year when her tour comes to an end.

The ISS orbits our planet and makes about 16 trips around earth every single day. On clear nights, it is possible to see the station pass overhead in the night sky.

A spokesman for Nasa said: ‘It is the third brightest object in the sky and easy to spot if you know when to look up. Visible to the naked eye, it looks like a fastmoving plane only much higher and travelling thousands of miles an hour faster.’

When British astronaut Major

Tim Peake was aboard the International Space Station in 2016, he posted lots of pictures taken across the whole of the UK.