Canadian astronaut tweets photo of Dublin from space

7 Jan 2013

View of Dublin taken from the International Space Station. Image via Chris Hadfield / Twitter

Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, who is currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS), has been causing a stir amongst Twitter users in recent weeks as he has been taking and posting dramatic photos of locations around planet Earth via the microblogging site, including a stunning aerial shot of Dublin City.

Hadfield (53), who has been aboard the ISS since just before Christmas as a flight engineer, has been giving daily Twitter updates of his daily routine, including the scientific experiments he is carrying out, in addition to taking photos of different regions on Earth.

He has been taking photos of everything from the Italian coastline, to the Mojave Desert in California and the Australian wildfires from his ringside view of Earth on the ISS.

In March, during the second portion of his six-month stay in space, Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command a spaceship when he becomes commander of the ISS.

A photo that he recently took of Dublin and posted on Twitter sparked a quick reaction from users, when Hadfield indicated he did not know if the photo was of a port town in Ireland, Wales or England.

Chris Hadfield Twitter

Users soon reliably informed him that the aerial shot took in Dublin City, including Dublin Bay …

Definitely Dublin

 

Hadfield responded with:  “@Cmdr_Hadfield Dublin! Of course! The orientation fooled me, and I took the picture! Colour this astronaut embarrassed…”.

In recent days, Hadfield has also been exchanging friendly tweets with William Shatner, the Canadian actor who played Caption Kirk on the Starship Enterprise in the TV series Star Trek, prompting a flurry of interest from Twitter users.

 Shatner was the first to spark off the Twitter exchange, with Hadfield quick to respond in Star Trek speak.

William Shatner Chris Greenfield Tweets

 At the time of writing Hadfield had garnered more than 122,000 Twitter followers.

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

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