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