19 photos from NASA astronaut Scott Kelly show Earth's 'Infinite Wonder'

In 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly blasted off to spend close to a year onboard the International Space Station. The "Year in Space" mission saw Kelly set the record for the total number of days spent in space by an American astronaut and allowed NASA to conduct tests on the effects of space travel on the human body. But it also allowed Kelly to take a year's worth of stunning photographs of the Earth, much of which he dubbed "Earth Art." 

With the launch of Kelly's new book of space photography, "Infinite Wonder," we take a look back at the most stunning images he took from the ISS. 

During his Year In Space, Kelly mostly shot on a Nikon D4, before transferring photos to a laptop to send back to earth. 

"The ground would downlink them periodically, every couple of hours assuming there were new ones available," he told CNET.

Kelly tweeted this image from the ISS with the message, "Patches of emerald, amber and purplish-blue woven over #MiddleEast like a colorful carpet."

"I'm an OK photographer," Kelly told CNET. "I think my somewhat unique skill set was having an artistic eye when it came to photographing the earth, particularly the close up photos I called 'Earth Art'."

A shot showing "the depths of Bahamas blues." Speaking to CNET about the launch of his new book of photography, Scott Kelly said it wasn't bittersweet to look back on the images he took on his Year in Space mission. 

"I look at them with nostalgia of an incredible experience and privilege," he said. 

From such a distance, Kelly's photos of the Earth lose a lot of their sense of place and become works of art. This shot, taken on May 8, 2015, shows the northern African Great Sand Sea, Libyan Desert and western Egypt.

A birds eye view of a frozen lake in the Himalayas. 

Kelly took this photograph as the sun was rising over the San Rafael Reef in Utah in May 2015, creating a striking shadow.

Kelly tweeted this image in December 2015, after almost nine months in space, with the message "Get over your mountains with rock and grit."

A photograph of the snowy foothills of Iran.

Also known as the "Eye of Africa," the Richat Structure is a geologic dome on the western edge of the Sahara, eroded over millions of years to show layers of sedimentary rock. It now makes for what Kelly calls a "wall-worthy art photo."

Shadows over the Forbidden Canyon, Rainbow Plateau and San Juan River in Utah. 

Kelly's photographs -- like this shot he dubbed "African Violet" -- look like they could be microscopic scientific images, despite being shot hundreds of miles from Earth. 

Kelly didn't just capture images of natural landscapes from the ISS. This shot of the southeast of the United States shows the Florida panhandle and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Kelly captured the night lights from 220 miles above Earth. 

A photograph showing the "dance of the aurora" as Kelly described it. 

The ISS frames an image of Japan, taken in January 2016. 

Kelly tweeted out this image in May 2015, asking his followers to name the four international borders shown in the photo. Two winners who correctly named Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Poland were given a signed copy of the photo when Kelly returned to Earth. 

Kelly shot this image of "sunset colours" on Earth, capturing the Soyuz spacecraft in the foreground while it was docked at the ISS. 

The Namib Sand Sea in southwestern Africa, viewed from the window of the ISS. 

Scott Kelly tweeted this image of Earth after 330 days in Space, saying he had always been counting up through the days during his year in space. But with 10 days left in February 2016, he started counting down.