HUNTER residents know Port Stephens is a natural gem, with its beautiful beaches, bays and forests. Now the rest of the world is getting in on the secret, with an astronaut capturing the region in all its glory from space.
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Port Stephens on Mach 10 this year.
The NASA Earth Observatory said the region was "a diverse area that includes towns, beaches, bays, and two types of forests - temperate forests and mangrove forests".
"Several towns are visible in this image, the largest of which is Nelson Bay," it said. "The area is the traditional home of the Worimi, an Aboriginal nation, and contains many culturally significant sites.
"Mangrove forests are supported by the wetland environments along the Karuah River and Branch River. Temperate forests, visible as dark green patches, are protected within national parks such as Worimi National Park, where the squirrel glider is designated as a threatened species.
"Port Stephens Bay is an estuarine system due to the exchange of water and sediment between the Karuah and Branch rivers with the Pacific Ocean. About 1 kilometre offshore of Yacaaba Head are the Cabbage Tree and Boondelbah Islands.
"These islands include the 36 hectare (89 acre) John Gould Nature Reserve that provides breeding habitat for the Gould's petrel, a rare endemic seabird."
The region's popular whale watching pastime also got a mention, as did the Port Stephens Great Lakes Marine Park.
"This marine park provides sanctuary and habitat protection for animals like the humpback whales that migrate across the Pacific Ocean from their feeding grounds in the Antarctic to breed along the Australian coast," NASA said. "Other animals found in these waters include the black rockcod and the critically endangered greynurse shark."
The photograph was taken by a member of the Expedition 68 crew with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 200 millimetres. Expedition 68 was the 68th long-duration expedition to the International Space Station, which ran from September 29, 2022 to March 28, 2023, and included six spacewalks, the longest being 7 minutes and 21 seconds.
