The best of space station astronaut Chris Hadfield's photos from orbit

I struggled with posting this because it’s not movie-related (or even entertainment-related) and it seems like a weird way to use HitFix resources, but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t really resist. After all, “Star Trek Into Darkness” is set to hit theaters on Friday and capture the imaginations of space freaks the world over, while at the same time, we have the homecoming of Commander Chris Hadfield and company from a few months’ stint on the International Space Station — real-life heroes of the cosmos. And Hadfield in particular has been doing what I think is some Pulitzer Prize-worthy work up there. Let me explain…

If you haven’t been following Hadfield on Twitter (yes, he’s been Tweeting from orbit — brave new world), you’ve really missed out on some pretty amazing images of our planet. You may have heard of Hadfield recently as a video of him singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” went viral this weekend, but I’ve been following and enjoying his perspective for months. He’s dropped plenty of insight along the way, but the crown jewel of all that is the rare gift of a series of images that captures the earth in ways we’ve just never seen (at least amassed in a collection such as this), and what is that if not journalism at its purest?

I’m not kidding when I say I think he deserves some sort of commendation for this. Because behind every image was the perspective of a (true) world traveler, with plenty of time and care put into it. Every new shot was just an awe-inspiring click of the mouse, and while I’m happy he’s home and I know he’ll be putting up some stuff he never got around to posting while in orbit, I’ll miss that daily check-in with one of Canada’s finest. (He’s also, by the way, been doing a lot of great work via satellite with classrooms, really doing his part to reignite a spark of passion for the space program in the youth, something we could definitely use.)

So I thought I’d share my enthusiasm with a list of my favorite Hadfield shots via his Tweets and words. You can check them out below (with some thoughts from me scattered here and there), but I encourage you to dig into Hadfield’s months-long archive of material at Twitter and feast your eyes on more. Hadfield ended up with over 880,000 followers eventually. It was just, in a word, awesome.

Welcome home to Hadfield and his crew and thanks for the perspective. It was invaluable. And you’re home just in time for “Star Trek!”

(Click on any of these for a larger view.)

The first thing that sticks out about many of the images is the vibrant color of the world. Some of the photos look like artwork you could hang on your wall…

African saltwater marsh – an incredibly complex ecosystem like nothing I’ve ever seen. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

– Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) March 8, 2013

The best of space station astronaut Chris Hadfield’s photos from orbit