Paolo Nespoli, astronaut on the space station, sends pictures to Earth via Twitter

Millions of people share photos with their Twitter followers. But few of these pictures are as spectacular as those uploaded to the site by Paolo Nespoli, who goes by the name @astro_paolo on Twitter. But then he has an almost unique vantage point - he is an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. Every couple of days, he tweets pictures of Earth from space to his followers. We present some of them here, but to see more, simply follow @astro_paolo on Twitter or take a look at his Flickr pages.
On 16 February, he took this remarkable photo minutes after the lift-off of a rocket carrying a payload to the space station. Ariane 5's exhaust trail can be seen as a thin streak beneath the International Space Station's remote manipulator arm.