• Australia's largest state hits record-high COVID-19 cases despite weeks of strict lockdown. 'It's a tinderbox ready to explode,' one official said.
• eToro says crypto made up 73% of trading commissions in the last quarter, as retail customers dived in
• A flight attendant says she was too exhausted to report a passenger who shoved her when a flight was overbooked: report
• US jobless claims climb for first time in 5 weeks, to 353,000

WHILE HIS FIVE colleagues were sleeping, astronaut Alexander Gerst photographed the International Space Station (ISS) at nighttime — and ended up with this enchanting series of images.

Gerst, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut from Germany, is coming to the end of the six-month long Blue Dot Mission — and will return to Earth on 10 November.

He’s been shooting his surroundings while working at ISS — and these pictures are a spooky insight into the research centre after-hours; capturing the silent, floating world of living in space…

Check them out.

Two astronaut suits float quietly in the darkness…

A green, mesmerising hue makes the station look like something out of the movie “Alien”.

A lone astronaut peers up from a door.

Dim blue lights create a captivating scene inside the orbiting ISS.

Where there are a lot of wires…

A normal-looking laptop, on the right, looks like a gentle reminder of every day technology alongside the mind-boggling space-age equipment.

All photos: ESA

Read: Here’s what Dublin looks like from the International Space Station

Read: Here’s why you really should be following the International Space Station online