Happy St. Patrick's Day! Astronaut Tweets Photo of Ireland from Space

Dublin
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet took this photo of Dublin, Ireland from the International Space Station on Jan. 24, 2017. (Image credit: Thomas Pesquet/ESA/NASA/Flickr)

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the International Space Station (ISS)!

NASA astronaut and ISS Cmdr. Shane Kimbrough beamed his St. Patrick's Day greetings to Earth this morning and tweeted a photo of Ireland taken from space.

The nighttime shot was taken by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet on Jan. 24 and zooms in on Dublin, the capital of Ireland. [Gallery: Thomas Pesquet's Amazing Photos from Space]

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Viewed from overhead, Dublin's city lights resemble the shape of a butterfly or a moth. That bright, glowing road that wraps around the city is the M50, the busiest motorway in Ireland.

Pesquet is not the first astronaut to tweet photos of Ireland from space for St. Patrick's Day. In 2015, NASA astronaut Terry Virts shared two photos of the island in its entirety.

But there are plenty of ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day at the space station other than taking pictures of Ireland. In 2011, Irish-American astronaut Cady Coleman marked the day by playing a 100 year-old Irish flute in space.

And in 2013, Canadian astronaut and musician Chris Hadfield dressed up with a snazzy green sweater and bowtie and recorded his own version of "Danny Boy," a traditional Irish song.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.