A PICTURE from the York Science and Innovation Grand Tour has been stolen.

The image of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula from the European Space Agency, on display at Kings Staith represents the York-based UK Space Education Office ESERO-UK.

Tony Robards, organiser of the event, said: “It’s extremely sad when you put these things up and they’re vandalised. This is a particularly stunning image, one of the few extra large ones we put up, which makes it extra sad that it has been vandalised.”

A number of images from the last Grand Tour in 2008, when classic images reproduced by York Art Gallery were displayed around the city centre, were also stolen.

Mr Robards said they had used anti-theft fixings to hang up the paintings, but the thief must have been determined to get it down.

“Most of the images are covered by CCTV so we will be looking at that to identify what has happened and ideally who has done it,” he said.

He said the image may be found, but if not there would be a replacement print.

“The grand tour goes on 100 per cent in tact,” he said. “We have had quite a lot of traffic on Twitter and I think a lot of people have seen it and enjoyed it.”