French astronaut Thomas Pesquet returned to Earth on November 9, 2021, after spending 199 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to coming home, he snapped this remarkable image, noting that living on the ISS “really feels like flying on a spaceship into the cosmos or—wait—that’s what we do.”

While astronauts typically point their cameras down at Earth, Pesquet gazed upward for this image. “When you let your eyes adapt to the night, you start seeing millions of stars, and it’s amazing,” says Pesquet. “There’s also a lot of beauty in the cosmos itself—it’s just harder to see (and to photograph) at first.”