Cloudy Fishing Over China

This Nightpod image taken from the International Space Station is not an interstellar cloud formation but artificial light over a cloudy China.

Nightpod is a camera stand that helps astronauts take sharper images of night-time Earth by compensating for the motion of the Station as it orbits our planet at 28,800 km/h.

This image was taken as the Space Station was flying northwest over the Chinese coast. The lights from cities or fishing boats are dispersed by clouds to create the Nebula-like effect. An astronaut from Expedition 30/31 took the picture on 21 March 2012 as the orbital outpost flew towards Shanghai, China.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Westfjords Peninsula, Iceland

This Envisat image was acquired over the Westfjords peninsula in northwest Iceland.

Located in the North Atlantic Ocean east of Greenland and immediately south of the Arctic Circle, Iceland is the westernmost European nation, and has more land covered by glaciers than the whole of continental Europe. The country sits on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other, causing strong geothermal and volcanic activity.

The grey area that is somewhat shaped like a Christmas tree is land, while the colorful spaces between the 'branches' are long fjords – long, narrow arms of the sea that stretch far inland.

During the ice ages both ice and rivers carved deep valleys in the mountains. As the climate changed, most of the ice melted, and the valleys were gradually filled with salt water from the coast, giving birth to the fjords.

The white dots along one of the fjords close to the center of the image are radar reflections from Westfjords peninsula’s largest town, Ísafjörður. More radar reflections from other towns can also be seen scattered along the coastline.

This image, also featured in the Earth from Space video program, was created by combining three Envisat radar acquisitions from 11 September 2004, 14 April 2007 and 3 May 2008 over the same area.

Image credit: ESA

Mount Etna Eruption

Mount Etna on the Italian island of Sicily is Europe's most active volcano. Its latest series of eruptions has continued for weeks, producing ash clouds that forced the closure of nearby Catania airport; lava flows that stretched from the summit to the south and southeast; and spectacular fire fountains. In this nighttime thermal image acquired December 12, 2013 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, the lava flows are white (hot), emanating from the southeast crater. The image covers an area of 19.5 by 19.5 miles (31.5 by 31.5 kilometers), and is located at 37.7 degrees north latitude, 15 degrees east longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Checkerboard Logging on the Idaho-Montana Border

Logging operations have left a striking checkerboard pattern in the landscape along the Idaho-Montana border, sandwiched between Clearwater and Bitterroot National Forests. The 1 x 1 mile squares are harvested at different times, producing a pattern of varied timber density and re-growth stages. The image was acquired July 30, 2012, covers an area of 23 x 20 km, and is located at 46.6 degrees north, 114.5 degrees west.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Flinders Ranges, Australia

This image from Japan’s ALOS satellite shows part of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, about 500 km north of Adelaide.

The area pictured is between Flinders Ranges National Park to the south, Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park to the north and Lake Frome due east (none of which is pictured).

The curving structures that dominate this image are part of a larger geosyncline – a subsiding linear trough in Earth’s crust – that includes the Flinders Ranges. The geosyncline consists of sedimentary rocks in a basin that were folded about 500 million years ago and have been eroded to the current landscape. In this image, the different colors show the different layers of rock.

Some of the oldest fossilised animal life have been found in parts of the Flinders Ranges.

Running up the middle of this image is a long, narrow gorge – typical of the ranges.

Along the right side of the image, the terrain is flat with a long, straight road running north–south. Numerous creeks appear like veins across the entire image.

The Flinders Ranges is one of Australia’s most seismically active regions, with numerous small earthquakes recorded every year.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite captured this image on 3 January 2009. ALOS was supported as a Third Party Mission, which means that ESA used its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: JAXA/ESA

Greater London

This image taken from the International Space Station shows the metropolis of London and its surroundings. The area is characterized by the M25 orbital motorway that encircles the city and the Thames river winding its way to the Eastern coast. As no streetlamps or other sources of light illuminate the Thames it appears as a black curving line leaving the intense white light of the inner city towards the right. Other areas without light include parks and other bodies of water, notably the large Hyde Park and Regent’s Park to the left of the City Centre and the William Girling and King George’s Reservoirs that supply London with drinking water.

Heading due South from London, down and slightly to the left on this image, is the M23 road to Gatwick international airport and the town of Crawley. The lights of Gatwick Airport shine brighter than the 100,000-inhabitant town. Airports are brightly-lit and easily recognizable from above so pilots can safely direct their aircraft to land. London’s Heathrow airport including the two main runways can be seen at the left of London City Centre.

Continuing south past Crawley to the English Channel, the seaside town of Brighton can be seen merging with Worthing to the left as one continuous stream of light.

ESA’s Nightpod camera aid helps astronauts track objects on Earth from the International Space Station. Following Earth’s motion automatically, the tripod creates clear images in low lights with off-the-shelf professional cameras – 400 km above our planet.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Thinning Antarctic Ice

Three years of measurements from CryoSat show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is estimated to be losing over 150 cubic kilometers of ice each year.

Image credit: CPOM/ESA

The Coldest Place on Earth

With remote-sensing satellites, scientists have found the coldest places on Earth, just off a ridge in the East Antarctic Plateau. The coldest of the cold temperatures dropped to minus 135.8 F (minus 93.2 C) -- several degrees colder than the previous record.

What is the coldest place on Earth? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 92 degrees Celsius) on a clear winter night.

Scientists made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, joined a team of researchers reporting the findings Monday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Researchers analyzed 32 years' worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 136 F (minus 93.2 C) was set August 10, 2010.

That is several degrees colder than the previous low of minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), set in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica. The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is northeastern Siberia, where temperatures in the towns of Verkhoyansk and Oimekon dropped to a bone-chilling 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 C) in 1892 and 1933, respectively.

"We had a suspicion this Antarctic ridge was likely to be extremely cold, and colder than Vostok because it's higher up the hill," Scambos said. "With the launch of Landsat 8, we finally had a sensor capable of really investigating this area in more detail."

The quest to find out just how cold it can get on Earth -- and why -- started when the researchers were studying large snow dunes, sculpted and polished by the wind, on the East Antarctic Plateau. When the scientists looked closer, they noticed cracks in the snow surface between the dunes, possibly created when wintertime temperatures got so low the top snow layer shrunk. This led scientists to wonder what the temperature range was, and prompted them to hunt for the coldest places using data from two types of satellite sensors.

They turned to the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites. These sensitive instruments can pick up thermal radiation emitted from Earth's surface, even in areas lacking much heat.

Using these sensors to scan the East Antarctic Plateau, Scambos detected extremely cold temperatures on a 620-mile stretch of the ridge at high elevations between Argus and Fuji, and even colder temperatures lower elevations in pockets off the ridge. Then, with the higher resolution of the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) aboard Landsat 8, the research team pinpointed the record-setting pockets.

The team compared the sites to topographic maps to explore how it gets so cold. Already cold temperatures fall rapidly when the sky clears. If clear skies persist for a few days, the ground chills as it radiates its remaining heat into space. This creates a layer of super-chilled air above the surface of the snow and ice. This layer of air is denser than the relatively warmer air above it, which causes it to slide down the shallow slope of domes on the Antarctic plateau. As it flows into the pockets, it can be trapped, and the cooling continues.

"By causing the air to be stationary for extended periods, while continuing to radiate more heat away into space, you get the absolute lowest temperatures we're able to find," Scambos said. "We suspected that we would be looking for one magical site that got extremely cold, but what we found was a large strip of Antarctica at high altitude that regularly reached these record low temperatures."

The study is an example of some of the intriguing science possible with Landsat 8 and the TIRS instrument, which was built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since its launch February 11, Landsat 8 has captured approximately 550 scenes per day of Earth's land surface. USGS processes, archives and distributes the images free of charge over the Internet.

"With Landsat 8, we expect to see more accurate and more detailed maps of the landscape than we've ever been able to see," said James Irons, the mission's project scientist at Goddard. "If change is occurring, I think we'll be able to detect it earlier and track it."

Researchers also are eager to see what new results come out of Landsat 8, both from icy plateaus and Earth's warmer regions.

"What we've got orbiting Earth right now is a very accurate and consistent sensor that can tell us all kinds of things about how the land surface of Earth is changing, how climate change is impacting the surface of Earth, the oceans of Earth, and the icy areas of Earth," Scambos said. "Finding the coldest areas on Earth is just the beginning of the discoveries we're going to be able to make with Landsat 8."

Image credit: Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center; text credit: NASA

Spatial Distribution of the Tuolumne River Basin

Spatial distribution of snow water equivalent across the Tuolumne River Basin from April 10 to June 1, 2013 as measured by NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory.

Flying aboard a Twin Otter aircraft, the Airborne Snow Observatory measures two properties most critical to understanding snowmelt runoff and timing: snow depth and snow reflectivity. By combining snow depth with estimated density, snow water equivalent -- the amount of water in the snow -- is derived and used to calculate the amount of water that will run off. Snow reflectivity, or albedo, is the fraction of the incoming amount of sunlight reflected by snow. Subtracting reflected sunlight from incoming sunlight gives the absorbed sunlight, which largely controls the speed of snowmelt and timing of its runoff.

Map credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see NASA Snow Mapper Reaps Big Benefits for California.

Totten Glacier Ice Shelf

This image shows the Totten Glacier ice shelf in East Antarctica (the wrinkled white area at top left) on September 25, 2013. Two large open-water polynyas appear on the sea ice below and to the right of the shelf, as well as several smaller ones. The open-water areas are bright black. The stippled diagonal line from lower left to upper right is the outer edge of the sea ice, with cloud cover to the right of that line. The image is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite.

Photo credit: NASA

Note: For more information, see NASA Finds Reducing Salt Is Bad for Glacial Health.

Ivanpah Solar Energy Plant, California

In September 2013 the largest solar plant of its kind in the world started producing power in southern California's Mojave Desert near the Nevada border. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System uses 170,000 mirrors to focus the sun's heat on giant boilers atop 120m concrete towers, where water is turned into steam to power turbines that generate electricity. The 392 megawatt plant will generate enough electricity to power 140,000 homes. The image was acquired May 30, 2013, covers an area of 14.4 x 15.7 km, and is located at 35.5 degrees north, 115.5 degrees west.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Gravity Scar from the March 2011 Japanese Earthquake

Changes in Earth’s gravity field resulting from the earthquake that hit Japan on 11 March 2011 (mE=10-12s-2). A combination of data from ESA’s GOCE mission and the NASA–German Grace satellite, shows the ‘vertical gravity gradient change’. The 'beachball' marks the epicenter.

Image credit: DGFI/TU Delft

Aorounga Crater, Chad

This image from Japan’s ALOS satellite shows the Aorounga Crater in northern Chad.

The crater is just south of the Tibesti Mountains, a range of inactive – with some potentially active – volcanoes in the central Sahara desert.

Measuring about 12 km across, the crater was created by a meteorite impact about 340 million years ago.

Clearly visible is the dark, central peak, caused by material splashing up after the impact, similar to how water bounces back up when a stone is thrown in. This peak is surrounded by a low, sand-filled ring, which is surrounded by another ring of rock from when the material was thrown outwards. A distinctive low, sand-filled trough circles the others – the outer edges of the initial impact.

The linear rock ridges that run diagonally across this image are ‘yardangs’ and are formed by wind erosion. Here, we can clearly see how the wind blows from northeast to southwest. Sand dunes form in the wind-cut valleys between the rock ridges of the yardangs.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite captured this image on 3 November 2010. ALOS was supported as a Third Party Mission, which means that ESA used its multimission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: JAXA/ESA

San Francisco Bay

An urban sprawl engulfs San Francisco Bay in a sea of lights. The three bridges Oakland Bay Bridge, San Mateo Bridge and Dumbarton Bridge light up as straight lines connecting the coasts. From top right going clockwise freeways pass through Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, San Jose, Palo Alto, Redwood City, San Mateo and San Francisco.

The bright lights of the cities are themselves surrounded by natural parks. Passed the coastal Eastern Bay Regional Parks to the right, the cities of Pleasanton and Walnut Creek keep the dark wilderness at bay with their street lighting. To the left, aside from the Half Moon Bay Airport on the coast, blackness prevails: the Pacific Ocean.

This image was taken on 23 December 2012 by an astronaut on the International Space Station. Circling Earth at an altitude of around 400 km astronauts witness the beauty of our planet from a unique vantage point. At night, human settlements can be seen as street lighting illuminates the sky. ESA developed an automatic camera tripod that compensates for the speed of the Space Station flying at 28 800 km/h to take sharper pictures at night.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Flooding in Sardinia

In mid-November 2013, extratropical cyclone Cleopatra brought devastating flooding to the Italian island of Sardinia that has claimed at least 18 lives and led to the declaration of a state of emergency for the island. To assist in the disaster response efforts, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency and Università degli studi della Basilicata, generated this preliminary version of a flood proxy map for inundated regions in Sardinia.

Areas of strong blue on the map are regions that have likely experienced flooding. The blue color represents a decrease of radar signal echo on November 18, 2013 compared to data from October 17, 2013. The decreased radar signal echo is likely to have been caused by water covering land (water has a smooth surface, which results in a weaker echo signal, while land has a rough surface and stronger echo). Flat regions that are colored dark blue can be interpreted as likely flooded regions, but other areas need further analysis before interpreting. Some distortion in the geolocation of this preliminary product is present in areas of high relief.

The approximately 5 by 12 miles (8 by 20 kilometers) map covers the region marked by the red rectangular box in the larger, 137 mile (220 kilometer) long overview image of Sardinia shown above processed by JPL's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team using X-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. The technique uses a prototype algorithm to rapidly detect surface changes caused by natural or human-produced damage. It was processed as part of a joint collaboration between JPL, Caltech, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Centro Interpretazione Dati di Osservazione della Terra (CIDOT) and the Università degli studi della Basilicata. Image processing was implemented using the JPL Interometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Scientific Computing Environment (ISCE) software package, and the amplitude images were registered to the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Plus digital elevation model with a resolution of 1 arc second. Individual pixel size of the flood map is about 98 feet (30 meters) across.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI

Wildfire Scars in New South Wales, Australia

October 2013 brought the worst fires seen in Australia's New South Wales in many decades. More than 100 wildfires burned. One of the largest was the Hall Road fire, southwest of Sydney, west of the town of Wollongong. The fire scar is seen in this satellite image acquired November 14, 2013, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Vegetation is displayed in shades of red, burned areas are dark gray, water is black and blue, and urban areas are blue-gray. The image covers an area of 20 by 24 miles (33 by 39 kilometers), and is located at 34.3 degrees south latitude, 150.7 degrees east longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Qarhan Salt Lake, China

This false-color composite image from the Kompsat-2 satellite shows part of the Qarhan Salt Lake on the Tibetan Plateau in China.

There are multiple salt lakes across this region, but Qarhan’s 5850 sq km make it the largest. It holds an estimated 60 billion tonnes of salt, and is also a major production base for potassium and magnesium.

In this image, we can see division of the salt evaporation ponds. While the false color makes them appear blue, salt ponds naturally range in color depending on their algal concentration and salinity.

The nearest city, Golmud, sits about 50 km to the southwest (not pictured).

This image was acquired on 4 December 2008 by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2.

ESA supports Kompsat as a Third Party Mission, meaning it uses its ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data to users.

Photo credit: KARI/ESA

Pine Island Glacier Iceberg by Proba-2

The smallest camera on one of ESA’s smallest satellites caught this image of a giant iceberg – larger than Singapore – drifting away from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier.

The espresso cup-sized Exploration Camera, X-Cam, on ESA’s Proba-2 satellite took this picture on 19 November, peering eastwards into the Antarctic interior.

The 700 sq km iceberg in open water to the right side of the image, officially known as iceberg B-31, broke away from the Pine Island Glacier on the Antarctic west coast back in July. Such a ‘calving’ was widely anticipated, with a crack in the ice having formed over several years.

The berg is gradually drifting away from its parent glacier, expected either to move east, parallel to the coast, or head out into the Southern Ocean.

Proba-2’s X-Cam’s black and white image gives a wider perspective than a standard Earth observation camera, more like an astronaut’s eye view, but it was taken at around double the altitude that human crews currently fly, at more than 700 km.

Less than a cubic meter in size, Proba-2 focuses on observing solar activity and space weather. But it also keeps a small eye on its home world.

One of the 17 experimental technologies hosted on Proba-2 is the compact X-Cam. Housed on the underside of the satellite, the monochrome X-Cam observes in the visible and infrared with a 100° field of view.

Photo credit: ESA

Note: For more information, see PIA17694: Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, MISR Multi-angle Composite.

Tennessee River Near Chattanooga

In the fall of 1863, Confederate General Braxton Bragg's army occupied the mountains that ring the vital railroad center of Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River. Union General Ulysses Grant, brought in to save the situation, steadily built up offensive strength, and on November 23-25 burst the blockade in a series of brilliantly executed attacks. Union forces pushed Confederate troops away from Chattanooga. The victory set the stage for General Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. The image was acquired October 17, 2010, and is located at 35 degrees north latitude, 85.3 degrees west longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Dasht-e Lut Salt Desert

The Dasht-e Lut salt desert in southeast Iran is captured in this Envisat image.

The desert is often called the ‘hottest place on Earth’ as satellites measured record surface temperatures there for several years. The highest land surface temperature ever recorded was in the Lut Desert in 2005 at 70.7ºC, as measured by NASA’s Aqua satellite.

The light area in the center of the image are the long, parallel wind-carved ridges and furrows. The darker area to the east is an extent of massive sand dunes, some reaching up to 300 m tall.

In the upper-right section we can see a light green, shallow body of water that straddles Iran’s border with Afghanistan. With their arid surroundings, the wetlands in this border region have been a major source of food and fresh water for thousands of years, as well as an important stop for migratory birds. But irrigation expansion combined with droughts have caused the water levels in these wetlands to drop significantly – and some years even dry up.

In the lower-left we can see the white, snow-capped Jebal Barez mountains.

A major earthquake struck about 100 km east of the snow-caps in 2003, its epicenter near the ancient city of Bam (lower-central portion of image). Iran experiences frequent tectonic activity as several major fault lines cross the country.

This image was acquired by Envisat’s MERIS instrument on 2 April 2012 and is also featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: ESA

Chinese Fishing Vessels

Cities and street lights are not the only things visible from the International Space Station at night. This picture taken with the automated camera aid Nightpod shows Chinese fishing boats using bright lights on the South-China Sea to attract fish to their nets.

The village at the center is unidentified. The image was taken by an astronaut on Expedition 30 and the frame number is 172306.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Damage to Tacloban City, Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan

When Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth, struck the Philippines November 8, 2013, it tore a wide swath of destruction across large parts of the island nation. To assist in the disaster response efforts, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, generated this image of the storm's hardest-hit regions, depicting its destruction.

The 40-by-50 kilometer damage proxy map, which covers a region near Tacloban City, where the massive storm made landfall, was processed by JPL's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team using X-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. The technique uses a prototype algorithm to rapidly detect surface changes caused by natural or human-produced damage. The assessment technique is most sensitive to destruction of the built environment. When the radar images areas with little to no destruction, its image pixels are transparent. Increased opacity of the radar image pixels reflects damage, with areas in red reflecting the heaviest damage to cities and towns in the storm's path. The time span of the data for the change is August 19--November 11, 2013. Each pixel in the damage proxy map is about 30 meters across.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI

Note: For more information, see PIA17700: NASA Spacecraft Shows Before/After of Typhoon Haiyan's Devastation, NASA Damage Map Helps in Typhoon Disaster Response and NASA Peers Into One of Earth's Strongest Storms Ever.

Beijing, China

Beijing, Capital of China, photographed by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli during the celebrations of the Chinese New Year, "Spring Festival" on 2 February 2011. Do you see any fireworks?

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Naples, Italy

Taken at night from the International Space Station this picture is easily recognizable as Naples, Italy because of the black hole in the bright lights: Mount Vesuvius. Understandably, few people live on the still-active volcano meaning no street lights or houses illuminate the area.

The center of Naples is slightly above and to the left - the brightest part of the image. To the left is the Mediterranean Sea with the islands of Ischia, Procida and Capri lit-up to reveal human presence.

The image was taken on a clear night from 400 km above but it was not cloud free around Naples. The top half of the image shows gray clouds.

This image was taken with the Nightpod camera-stand that tracks the movement of Earth passing under the International Space Station at 28,800 km/h, keeping any target fixed in the middle of the viewfinder. Standard cameras fixed to Nightpod can take pictures with longer exposure times so astronauts can take sharper pictures of cities at night.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Namib Desert

The Namib Desert is a coastal desert in southern Africa. This portion in central Namibia consists entirely of linear and longitudinal sand dunes. Owing to its antiquity, the Namib may be home to more endemic species than any other desert in the world. Most of the desert wildlife is arthropods and other small animals that live on little water, although larger animals inhabit the northern regions. The image was acquired June 18, 2000, covers an area of 55.5 x 57 km, and is located at 25.5 degrees south latitude, 15.1 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

1993–2011 Ocean Currents

Weekly evolution of ocean surface currents from January 1993 to December 2011. Strong currents such as the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, the Kuroshio in the Pacific Ocean and the Agulhas Current along the east coast of Africa are visible. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current and Equatorial currents are also evident, with speeds reaching up to 1.5 m/s. Gravity data from the GOCE mission together with 20 years of satellite altimetry measurements and information from drifters were combined to create this animation of our moving oceans.

Video credit: ESA/CNES/CLS

Iran and Iraq Persian Gulf Coast

This image acquired over the Middle East shows the northern end of the Persian Gulf, along with the border of Iran and Iraq and the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab river.

The main part of the image covers Iran’s southern Khuzestan Province on the Persian Gulf.

The lines cutting through the middle of the image are roads, as well as the Trans-Iranian Railway.

In the upper-left corner, we can see part of the Karun River. It is the country’s only navigable river, originating in the Zagros mountains and running its 720 km course southwest and into the Shatt al-Arab river.

In addition to the Karun, the Shatt al-Arab also carries water from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Persian Gulf.

In the lower-left corner, we can see the Shatt al-Arab where it creates part of the border with Iraq. The marshy Faw Peninsula (part of which is visible to the extreme left) is the site of a number of important Iraqi oil installations.

The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world’s largest single source of crude oil, with related industries dominating the region.

The center of the image is dominated by the marshes and mudflats of the Shadegan wildlife refuge. It is the largest wetland in Iran, and plays a significant role in the natural ecology of the area.

The area provides a wintering habitat for a wide variety of migratory birds, and is the most important site in the world for a rare species of aquatic bird – the marbled duck.

The northern part of the wetland is a vital freshwater habitat for many endangered species.

This image was acquired on 26 July 2012 by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper on Landsat 7. Landsat 7 imagery accounts for the largest parts of Earth’s surface displayed on web mapping services such as Google Earth and Google Maps.

Image credit: USGS/ESA

Western Uganda

Lakes and mountains of western Uganda are captured in this Envisat radar image.

The area pictured is part of the Albertine Rift, a branch of the East African Rift where the Somali Plate is splitting away from the rest of the continent.

In the upper right corner is Lake George. With the equator running right through the middle, this body of water is recognized as a Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty for the sustainable use of wetlands.

Its waters flow into the Kazinga Channel – known for its high concentration of hippopotami and Nile crocodiles – and then empty into Lake Edward at lower left.

The colors in the two lakes and connecting channel indicate changes in water level between acquisitions. On either side of the channel, large craters and crater-lakes dot the volcanic fields.

At the top of the image, we can see the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (west).

Its highest peak topping 5100 m, the mountain chain is home to numerous glaciers, waterfalls and lakes. However, climate change has negatively affected the glaciers, and subsequently the mountains’ vegetation and biodiversity.

To the south of the mountains, the bright pink, purple and green areas show where changes in the land’s surface occurred between the three radar scans that make up this composite image. These changes are primarily in vegetation as the land here is blanketed with agricultural plots. There is even a clear-cut line where agricultural activities end and the protected land begins.

This image was created by combining two acquisitions from Envisat’s radar on 14 June 2007, 14 February 2008 and 3 July 2008 over the same area and it is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: ESA

Wildfires in the Blue Mountains

A mild winter and an extremely hot September in Australia have led to an early start to the fire season Down Under. A number of significant bush fires continue to rage in the Blue Mountains to the west and north of Sydney, the most populous city in the country, with nearly 4.6 million people. The ongoing fires have led to the announcement of a state of emergency for the area, and days of high temperatures and strong winds have exacerbated the situation.

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft passed over the region around 11:00 a.m. AEDT (00:00 UTC) on October 20, 2013. This stereo anaglyph is a composite of images from two of MISR's nine cameras; the nadir (0°) camera is shown in the blue/green channels and the Ba (45.6° aft) camera is shown in the red channel. The images have been rotated clockwise so that north is to the right and west is toward the top. The anaglyph can be viewed with standard red/blue 3D glasses with the red lens over the left eye.

Sydney itself is in the bottom center of the image, with much of its area covered by a thin cloud of smoke. The Blue Mountains rise about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) above sea level, and analysis of the MISR data shows that the plume extending over the city is at an altitude of just over 1 mile (2 kilometers). On this date, the winds were relatively light and the temperature was around 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). The fires to the north have plumes that are somewhat lower in altitude.

The image extends from about 32.35 degrees south to 34.8 degrees south and 149.1 degrees east to 151.8 degrees east, covering about 168 miles (270 kilometers) in the north-south direction and 158 miles (255 kilometers) in the east-west direction. The images are a portion of the data acquired during Terra orbit 73608 from blocks 116 to 118 within World Reference System-2 path 90.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

Uruk, Iraq

The ancient city of Uruk is located in present-day Iraq, on an abandoned channel of the Euphrates River. Uruk gave its name to the Uruk period, spanning circa 4000 to 3100 BCE. At its height around 2900 BCE, Uruk had more than 50,000 residents, making it the largest city in the world. The semi-mythical king Gilgamesh ruled Uruk in the 27th century BCE. The city was occupied until around 500 AD, and was re-discovered in 1849. On the image, Uruk is the round yellowish area in the upper right. The image was acquired July 18, 2007, covers an area of 14.4 x 15.9 km, and is located at 31.3 degrees north latitude, 45.6 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Earth, by Juno

On October 9, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew past Earth, using our home planet's gravity to get the final boost it needed to reach Jupiter. The JunoCam instrument captured this monochrome view of Earth, and other instruments were tested to ensure they work as designed during a close planetary encounter.

The Juno spacecraft was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 5, 2011. Juno's rocket, the Atlas 551, was only capable of giving Juno enough energy or speed to reach the asteroid belt, at which point the Sun's gravity pulled Juno back toward the inner solar system. The Earth flyby gravity assist put Juno on course for arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Note: For more information, see PIA17516: Juno's Earth Flyby (Artist's Rendering).

Amazon River

This Kompsat-2 image, acquired on 6 July 2012, shows the Amazon River in the heart of northern Brazil’s rainforest. The false color makes land vegetation appear pink, while water appears green and dark blue. In the upper-right corner, we can see some sparse clouds. The shades of pink vary – the bolder color representing thick vegetation with lighter pink showing where trees were possibly cut down. In fact, in the upper-left portion of the image, there’s a clear line between the two shades, showing where vegetation was cut. The white dots show man-made structures. With their unique view from space, Earth observation satellites have been instrumental in highlighting the vulnerability of the rainforests by documenting the scale of deforestation.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: KARI/ESA

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

The desert southwest US is a showcase of geology. Canyonlands National Park in SE Utah is one such example. In this image, the Colorado River in the upper left corner forms the border of an area of outcrops of Permian (~280 million years old) Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Nearest the river, a series of arcuate faults has created a landscape of extremely narrow valleys. Further east a tributary of the Colorado has eroded the landscape into intricate feather-like drainage patterns. The image was acquired September 24, 2005, covers an area of 27 x 24 km, and is located near 38.1 degrees north latitude, 109.8 degrees west longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Arcachon Bay and the Dune of Pyla, France

The Arcachon Bay in France’s southwest Aquitaine region is pictured in this image acquired on on 8 September 2009 by Japan’s ALOS observation satellite. At the center of the image, we can see the large Dune of Pyla as an elongated light-brown rectangle. This large, sandy dune is about 2.7 km long, 500 m wide and about 110 m tall. In the upper right portion of the image is Arcachon Bay, home to oyster beds and farms.

ALOS was supported as a Third Party Mission, which means that ESA used its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community. In April 2011 the satellite abruptly lost power while mapping Japan’s tsunami-hit coastline.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: JAXA, ESA

Southern Greenland

Clouds blur our view of the snow below in parts of this image acquired over the southern tip of Greenland by the Landsat-8 satellite on 30 May 2013. Long fjords reach far inland and, zooming in on the tips of some of their 'fingers', we can see ice streams that drain the Greenland ice sheet. In the lower part of the image, white dots speckle the North Atlantic Ocean, like stars in the night sky. These are icebergs that – although they appear insignificant in this image – pose a major threat to ships.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: USGS/ESA

Athens, Greece

This image was taken on 4 January 2013 over central Athens, the capital and largest city of Greece. Near the center of the image is the famous Acropolis of Athens – standing high about the surrounding city as evident by the shadow to the north. Nearby to the southeast is the Temple of Zeus, with shadows from the remaining standing columns stretching across the grass. Further northeast are the National Gardens surrounding the Zappeion building. At the upper left corner of the gardens is the Greek parliament building overlooking Syntagma Square. In the lower-right corner we can see the large, white marble Panathenaic Stadium.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: European Space Imaging/DigitalGlobe

Kathmandu, Nepal

Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal, with a population of about 2.5 million inhabitants for the greater metropolitan area. The city is the gateway to tourism in Nepal, and is the center of the country's economy, with a literacy rate of 98%. The Kathmandu Valley is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to recognize the rich number of monuments found in seven different monument zones. The image was acquired March 4, 2009, covers an area of 22 by 22 km, and is located at 27.6 degrees north latitude, 85.3 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Pakistan Epicenter

On September 24 at 11:29 GMT, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in south-central Pakistan at a relatively shallow depth of 20 kilometers. The earthquake occurred as the result of oblique strike-slip motion, consistent with rupture within the Eurasian tectonic plate. Tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi as well as Karachi in Pakistan. Even though the immediate area to the epicenter is sparsely populated, the majority of houses are of mud brick construction and damage is expected to be extensive. The perspective view, looking to the east, shows the location of the epicenter in Pakistan's Makran fold belt. The image is centered near 27 degrees north latitude, 65.5 degrees east longitude, and was acquired December 13, 2012.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Argentine Wildfires

Wildfires have struck the Cordoba province of northern Argentina, caused by high temperatures and strong winds. The large fire, which began on September 9, 2013, spread to more than 37,000 acres (15,000 hectares), destroyed numerous homes, and led to the evacuation of several villages. This image, acquired on September 22, 2013 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, shows the extent of the burned area in black. Healthy vegetation, like forests and farm land, is depicted in red. The image covers an area of 19 by 30 miles (30 by 49 kilometers), and is located near 32.1 degrees south latitude, 64.8 degrees west longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Libya's Al-Jawf Oasis

Deep in the Sahara Desert, the Al Jawf oasis in southeastern Libya is pictured in this image from Japan’s ALOS satellite. The city can be seen in in the upper left corner, while large, irrigated agricultural plots appear like Braille across the image. Between the city and the plots we can see the two parallel runways of the Kufra Airport. The agricultural plots reach up to a kilometer in diameter. Their circular shapes were created by a central-pivot irrigation system, where a long water pipe rotates around a well at the center of each plot. Since the area receives virtually no rainfall, fossil water is pumped from deep underground for irrigation.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) captured this image on 24 January 2011 with its Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2, which charts land cover and vegetation in the visible and near-infrared spectral bands at a resolution of 10 m. ESA supports ALOS as a Third Party Mission, which means ESA uses its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: JAXA, ESA

Red Tide Off the UAE

The coast of the United Arab Emirates hosts some of the largest desalination plants in the world. While the water they release may affect the coastal ecosystem, harmful and non-harmful algae blooms can also greatly affect the desalination plants. In particular, the local phenomenon known as the ‘red tide’ has affected desalination plants over the last four years, causing severe damage and sometimes bringing operations to a halt.

Satellite data can be used to identify and monitor red tide events – such as this one spreading from the Gulf of Oman into the Persian Gulf. This image was acquired by Envisat’s MERIS instrument on 22 November 2008.

Image credit: C-wams project, Planetek Hellas/ESA

Fernandina Volcano

ESA's Envisat satellite shows ground deformation around a volcano on Fernandina island in the Galápagos islands, following the eruption in April 2009. The caldera is outlined in white, and the lava flow produced by the eruption is also in white, stretching to the coast.

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar – or InSAR – is a technique where two or more satellite radar images over the same scene are combined to detect slight changes between them. Tiny changes on the ground cause changes in the radar signal and lead to rainbow-colored patterns in the combined image.

Image credit: ESA/M. Bagnardi, University of Miami

Kuwait Oil Fields

In the desert of southern Kuwait, three oil fields spread out across the empty landscape. The country has the world's fifth largest oil reserves, and the 2.8 million people live in the eleventh richest country in the world. The massive oil reserves were discovered in the 1930s, after the country had emerged as an independent sheikhdom under the protection of the British Empire. The image was acquired September 27, 2009, covers an area of 30 x 54 km, and is located at 28.8 degrees north latitude, 47.8 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Uluru/Ayer's Rock

Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Australian outback is featured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite. The rock formation is anInselberg– German for ‘island mountain’ – a prominent geological structure that rises from the surrounding plain.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, this part of Australia was a shallow sea. Layers of sandstone settled on the ocean floor and were compressed. These hardened, horizontal layers were uplifted and tilted almost 90º upwards to their present position. The rock eroded slower than the surrounding softer deposits until the monolith stood high above an otherwise flat surface. From this perpendicular angle of the satellite acquisition, we can see those layers that were once horizontal and now appear to cut across the top of the formation.

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite acquired this image on 15 September 2011. ESA supports Kompsat as a Third Party Mission, meaning it uses its ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data to users.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: KARI/ESA

Anatolia's Lakes Tersakan and Tuz

This ALOS image was acquired over Anatolia’s dry, central plateau in Turkey. On the left side we can see the whole of Lake Tersakan, with part of Lake Tuz in the upper right corner.

Lake Tuz is Turkey’s second largest lake, as well as one of the largest saline lakes in the world. During the summer months, however, the lake water recedes to expose a thick layer of salt.

The bright white surface during these dry summer months has been used by Earth-observing satellites to calibrate their sensors for the color white – much like how you would adjust a camera’s white balance setting.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) captured this image on 21 October 2010 with its Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2 instrument.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: JAXA, ESA

Greenland's Hidden Grand Canyon

Hidden for all of human history, a 460 mile long canyon has been discovered below Greenland's ice sheet. Using radar data from NASA's Operation IceBridge and other airborne campaigns, scientists led by a team from the University of Bristol found the canyon runs from near the center of the island northward to the fjord of the Petermann Glacier.

A large portion of the data was collected by IceBridge from 2009 through 2012. One of the mission's scientific instruments, the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, operated by the Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, can see through vast layers of ice to measure its thickness and the shape of bedrock below.

Video credit: NASA

Note: For more information, see Mega-Canyon Discovered Beneath Greenland Ice.

The Spread of Western Wildfire Pollution

A new movie produced with data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft shows the spread of carbon monoxide pollution across North America from fires in the Western U.S., including the Beaver Creek Fire in Idaho and the Rim Fire in California. The movie shows carbon monoxide concentrations at altitude 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) as measured by AIRS.

About AIRS
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, AMSU, senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at Earth's weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations all the way down to Earth's surface, even in the presence of heavy clouds. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

CERN and Geneva, Switzerland

The CERN Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. Built from 1998 to 2008, this year it was the site of the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson, proposed by Peter Higgs in 1964. The accelerator lies in a tunnel 27 km in circumference (shown by the yellow circle), as deep as 175 m beneath the French-Swiss border northwest of Geneva. The image was acquired July 26, 2012, covers an area of 14.2 x 15.4 km, and is located at 46.3 degrees north latitude, 6.2 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Changes in Australia's Mass, June 2010 to February 2011

Changes in Australia's mass as reported by data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites from June 2010 to February 2011. Areas in greens and blues depict the greatest increases in mass, caused by excessive precipitation. The contour lines represent various land surface elevations. A new study co-authored and co-funded by NASA finds extensive flooding in Australia, combined with the continent's soils and unique topography, were the biggest contributors to the drop in global sea level observed in 2010 and 2011.

Image credit: NCAR/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see Littlest Continent Had Biggest Role in Sea Level Drop.

Star Dunes in the Algerian Sahara

Radially symmetrical, star dunes are pyramidal sand mounds with slipfaces on three or more arms that radiate from the high center of the mound. They tend to accumulate in areas with multidirectional wind regimes. Star dunes grow upward rather than laterally. They dominate the Grand Erg Oriental of the Algerian Sahara, as depicted in this image acquired October 27, 2012. It covers an area of 37 x 43 km, and is located at 29.8 degrees north latitude, 7.9 degrees east longitude.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Northwestern Greece

The northwestern part of Greece is pictured in this image acquired on 28 April by the Landsat-8 satellite. The Ionian Sea dominates the left side of the image, with the Ambracian Gulf near the center. In the upper-left corner we can see the Paxi islands. Paxos, to the north, boasts beautiful beaches mainly along its eastern coast, with dramatic cliffs and caves dominating the west side. The smaller island to the south, Antipaxos, is also known for its beaches as well as its traditional vineyards.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Photo credit: USGS

Typhoon Soulik

The swirling eye of Typhoon Soulik as it approached Taiwan last Friday is caught by a tiny espresso cup-sized camera on one of ESA’s smallest satellites, Proba-2. This X-Cam image of Typhoon Soulik was acquired on 12 July at 10:14 GMT. Less than a cubic meter in size, Proba-2 focuses on observing solar activity and space weather. But it also keeps a small eye on its homeworld. Among the 17 experimental technologies hosted on Proba-2 is the compact Exploration Camera, X-Cam. Housed on the underside of the satellite, the monochrome X-Cam observes in the visible and infrared with a 100° field of view.

Photo credit: ESA

Raystown Lake, Pennsylvania

This Envisat radar image is centered on the man-made Raystown Lake in the US state of Pennsylvania. Near the top of the lake – which appears as a snaking red and blue line – there is a bright white radar reflection from the Raystown Dam. The area pictured is part of the greater Valley and Ridge Appalachians, in the Appalachian Mountain range. The lines that cut through the image are the long, even ridges characteristic of this region. One of the significant ridges is Tuscoarora Mountain in the lower-right corner. This is a compilation of three radar images from 23 December 2007, 2 March 2008 and 11 May 2008.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: ESA