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It's an image which lends a new gravitas to the well-worn phrase room with a view. But this is exactly what astronaut Soichi Noguchi saw from inside the International Space Station (ISS) as it hurtled towards aurora borealis - or the northern lights - at 28,000km per hour (17,500mph).
After taking the spellbinding photograph and then travelling through the aurora itself, he posted it on Twitter for all to see.
The photo shows a green glow hovering approximately 60miles above the Earth's surface.
This natural light display is created when particles enter the atmosphere and collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, giving them an electric charge.
The extraordinary red glow above it can reach up to 300miles above our planet. This means that Noguchi's online boast of travelling through the aurora is technically correct as the space station was 240miles above Earth.
The craft in the foreground of the picture is a Progress capsule, which brings supplies such as food, water and air to the ISS.
Noguchi, who is known as Astro_Soichi on Twitter, and his Expedition 22 colleagues recently broke the world record for the number of photos taken by an ISS crew. They have snapped over 100,000 images of space in an accumulated six months in the craft.
The total number of photos taken by crew members aboard the ISS now totals 639,000.
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