Every 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.

The crew aboard the International Space Station has a window on Planet Earth. In this image an orbital sunrise beams across Earth’s horizon revealing silhouetted clouds above the South China Sea.

It’s hard to think that the earth is one –

This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters

Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,

Attended only by the loveless moon.

Stars and Planets by Norman MacCaig from The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2005), edited by Ewen McCaig