Surreal astronaut photos show the danger and beauty of Hurricane Maria

A hurricane seen from space has a certain kind of beauty.

On the one hand, you objectively understand that the huge storm is wreaking havoc on the ground below it, yet on the other, you can't help but marvel at the extreme display of nature's ability to create something incredible.

New photos taken by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik on the International Space Station, really put that juxtaposition on display with Hurricane Maria.

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The new images show the hurricane's huge eye and bursts of convection as it moved through the Atlantic basin, slamming into Puerto Rico and reportedly leaving the entire island without power.

One of Bresnik's photos in particular shows off the calm eye of the storm surrounded by clouds and extreme thunderstorms of the eyewall.

Bresnik and his colleagues on the Space Station have seen more than their fair share of hurricanes from space this season.

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Hurricane Maria's eye looks somewhat wide in Bresnik's images, but when Hurricane Maria was a high-end Category 5 storm, it had what's known as a "pinhole eye" that was less than 6 miles across.

Once Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, however, the storm reconstituted itself with a 40-mile-wide eye as it weakened.

Now Hurricane Maria is categorized as a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour. Its track at the moment is somewhat unclear, but its winds are currently battering the Dominican Republic after the storm moved offshore from Puerto Rico.