Satellite Images of Earth's Geography

True color satellite images capturing diverse geographical features like rivers, meteor impact craters, and deltas from space.

(12-22 Jan. 1997) --- The crewmembers, like astronauts 30 years ago, found the Nile River and its conspicuous delta an irresistible photo target from space, in this case from the Space Shuttle Atlantis' overhead windows. The majority of people living in Egypt reside in the city of Cairo. One of the most intensely cultivated lands in the world, the Nile delta can lay claim to some of the highest levels of soil salinity, as well as to being one of the highest users of fertilizer. The majority of Egypt's arable land is located in the delta. .

. iss068e030991 (Dec. 17, 2022) - The Niger River, its tributaries, and the Fati and Oro lakes, are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 257 miles above the African nation of Mali.

Gweni Fada Meteor Impact Crater, Chad, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of Gweni-Fada impact structure, Chad (diameter : 14 km). Image taken on 19 January 1987 using LANDSAT data.

SL3-28-059 (July-September 1973) --- A vertical view of the Lake Mead and Las Vegas, Nevada area as photographed from Earth orbit by one of the six lenses of the Itek-furnished S190-A Multispectral Photographic Facility Experiment aboard the Skylab space station. Lake Mead is water of the Colorado River impounded by Hoover Dam. Most of the land in the picture is Nevada. However, a part of the northwest corner of Arizona can be seen. Federal agencies participating with NASA on the EREP project are the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers. All EREP photography is available to the public through the Department of Interior s Earth Resources Observations Systems Data Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 57198.

Volga Delta, Russia, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of the Volga Delta. The delta has more than 500 arms (on the image, the major one and secondary ones) surrounded by salt marshes and swamps. The white and yellow dots in the Northwest are saline bays, showing the former extension of the Caspian sea. Northeast is the city of Astrakhan. The image used data from LANDSAT 7 satellite.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 39 crew aboard the ISS. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter and downlinked in folder CT Connecticut.

iss064e015452 (Dec. 25, 2020) --- The Chuska Mountains of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above the "Land of Enchantment."

ISS004-E-8852 (20 March 2002) --- Astronaut Daniel W. Bursch, flight engineer for Expedition Four aboard the International Space Station, used a digital still camera to capture this image of Mt. Everest in the Himalayan Range. The mountain is near frame center. Here are the notes Bursch added in one of his reports to ground controllers: "One morning I happened to be up early. I glanced at our world map and saw that wed be passing near Mt Everest soon. I checked the computer, realized that we were in an attitude that would allow me to open the window shutter and there was Mt Everest! It almost seemed to jump out at me. The low sun angle (it was close to orbital sunrise) gave tremendous relief to the mountains. It was just one of those sights that will be forever burned into my brain!"

(12-22 Jan. 1997) --- The crewmembers, like astronauts 30 years ago, found the Nile River and its conspicuous delta an irresistible photo target from space, in this case from the Space Shuttle Atlantis' overhead windows. The majority of people living in Egypt reside in the city of Cairo. One of the most intensely cultivated lands in the world, the Nile delta can lay claim to some of the highest levels of soil salinity, as well as to being one of the highest users of fertilizer. The majority of Egypt's arable land is located in the delta. .

AS09-22-3441 (March 1969) --- Near vertical view of the Phoenix, Arizona area as photographed from the Apollo 9 spacecraft during its Earth-orbital mission. Farmland patterns checkerboard the area along the Gila River. Phoenix is located right of center near the clouds.

NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument imaged areas burned by the Bighorn Fire north of Tucson, Arizona, on June 29. In the image, vegetation is shown in red and burned areas are shown in dark gray. It covers an area of 20 by 30 miles (33 by 48 kilometers).

The combination of morphological and topographic information from stereo images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as compositional data from near-infrared spectroscopy has been proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the geology of Mars. Beginning with the OMEGA instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter in 2003, the surface of Mars has been examined at near-infrared wavelengths by imaging spectrometers that are capable of detecting specific minerals and mapping their spatial extent. The CRISM (Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars) instrument on our orbiter is a visible/near-infrared imaging spectrometer, and the HiRISE camera works together with it to document the appearance of mineral deposits detected by this orbital prospecting. Mawrth Vallis is one of the regions on Mars that has attracted much attention because of the nature and diversity of the minerals identified by these spectrometers. It is a large, ancient outflow cha

Togo, Africa, True Colour Satellite Image With Border And Mask. Satellite view of Togo (with border and mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 35 crew aboard the ISS.

Kalahari Desert, Namibia, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of the Kalahari desert, at the frontier between Namibia and South Africa. The dunes are red-coloured by iron oxyds. The blue dots are argillakeeous basins, still filled with water. The white dotes are salted basins that show how dry this plakee is. Image taken on 3 March 1989 using LANDSAT data.

Mongolia, Asia, True Colour Satellite Image With Mask. Satellite view of Mongolia (with mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

This image from NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer instrument (AVIRIS) was collected on May 17, 2010, over the site of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill disaster. In the image, crude oil on the surface appears orange to brown.

Recorded by the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-110 mission, this is a photograph of the ice- covered Manicouagin Reservoir located in the Canadian Shield of Quebec Province in Eastern Canada, partially obscured by low clouds. This reservoir marks the site of an impact crater, 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide, which according to geologists was formed 212 million years ago when a meteorite crashed into this area. Over millions of years, the crater has been worn down by glaciers and other erosional processes. The Space Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis, STS-110 mission, was launched April 8, 2002 and returned to Earth April 19, 2002.

STS070-705-094 (13-22 JULY 1995) --- The southern half (about 70 miles in this view) of the Tifernine dunes of east-central Algeria appears on this view. The Tifernine dune-sea is one of the more dramatic features visible from the Shuttle when flying over the Sahara Desert. The dunes lie in a basin of dark-colored rocks heavily cut by winding stream courses (top right). Very occasional storms allow the streams to erode the dark rocks and transport the sediment to the basin. Westerly winds then mold the stream sediments into the complex dune shapes so well displayed here. North at bottom.

Anatahan is a stratovolcano that erupted in May 2003, forming a new crater. This image is from NASA's Terra satellite.

NASA's Terra satellite viewed America's National Momuments and Parks in this 3D image.

SL4-93-067 (16 Nov. 1973-8 Feb. 1974) --- A spectacular winter view of the Flagstaff, Arizona area is seen in this Skylab 4 Earth Resources Experiments package S190-B (five-inch earth terrain camera) infrared photograph taken from the Skylab space station in Earth orbit. Included in the scene are the San Francisco Mountains, Oak Creek Canyon, Painted Desert and Meteor Crater. The infrared picture depicts in red living vegetation, in white the snow, and in bright blue the water. Major features identified in this photograph are Humphrey's peak, top center, Flagstaff at foot of the peak, Sunset Crater volcanic field with numerous vents and craters right of Flagstaff and Meteor Crater (right center). Within the mountainous areas several clear areas generally rectangular are visible and represent the areas where lumbering has removed the forest. The thin white line extending from left corner to Sunset Crater fields is the power transmission line cleared area. Roads are subdued and are not e

Satellite view of the State of South Dakota, United States. This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

This radar image shows the Star City cosmonaut training center, east of Moscow, Russia. Four American astronauts are training here for future long-duration flights aboard the Russian Mir space station.

iss023e007925 (March 21, 2010) --- Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited about 250 miles above.

NASA's Earth Observing 1 spacecraft obtained this infrared image on Dec. 1, 2015 when Momotombo volcano, Nicaragua, began erupting on Dec. 1, 2015, after more than a century of inactivity.

ISS010-E-17616 (12 February 2005) --- Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 10 crewmember on the International Space Station.

The city of Nome lies on the southern Seward Peninsula coast of Alaska, on the Bering Sea, as shown in this image from NASA's Terra spacecraft.

AS09-22-3463 (9 March 1969) --- Oblique view of the Houston, Texas area as photographed from the Apollo 9 spacecraft during its Earth-orbital mission. This picture was taken from an altitude of 103 nautical miles, at about 1 40 p.m. (CST), on March 9, 1969. Prominent features visible include highways leading out of the city, Lake Houston, San Jacinto River, Trinity Bay, Galveston Bay, Brazos River, Baytown, and Texas City.

The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists called chaos terrain. This newly reprocessed image, along with two others along the same longitude (see PIA23871 and PIA23872), were taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on Sept. 26, 1998, and reveal details of diverse surface features on Europa. All three images were captured along the same longitude of Europa as Galileo flew by on Sept. 26, 1998, in the spacecraft's 17th orbit of Jupiter (orbit E17). It was the eighth of Galileo's 11 targeted flybys of Europa. High-resolution images were taken through a clear filter in grayscale (black and white). Using lower-resolution, color images of the same region from a different flyby (orbit E14), technicians recently mapped color onto the higher-resolution images. (Orbit E14 resulted in this global view of Europa (see PIA19048). The color information gathered on that flyby was used to reproce

Satellite view of Bolivia with Bump Effect (with border and mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

Surface brightness contrasts accentuated by a thin layer of snow enable a network of rivers, roads, and farmland boundaries to stand out clearly in these images from NASA's Terra satellite of southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba.

The south polar residual cap of carbon dioxide ice rapidly changes. This image was planned as an almost exact match to the illumination and viewing angles of a previous one we took in August 2009. The pits have all expanded and merged, and we can just barely see the patterns in the 2009 image compared to this January 2019 picture. The 2009 image is also brighter and bluer, with more seasonal frost and/or less dust over the surface. These images were both taken in late southern summer, but our 2019 picture is slightly later in the Martian season by about two weeks. This gap allowed for additional loss of frost that might make the surface darker, but there are also year-to-year changes. In particular, there was a near-global dust storm in the summer of 2018 and late southern spring on Mars, and extra deposits of dust would have warmed the surface and promoted even more disappearance of the frost.

AST-02-130 (20 July 1975) --- An oblique view of a portion of Libya and the Arab Republic of Egypt, as photographed from the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit during the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. The geological features are the Jebel Uweinat and Jebel Arkenu basaltic mountains in the Libyan sand sea. This picture was taken with a 70mm Hasselblad camera using medium-speed Ektachrome QX-807 type film. The spacecraft was at an altitude of 219 kilometers (136 statute miles).

Color satellite image of Niamey, capital city of Niger. The Niger River flows through the city. Image collected on May 14, 2017 by Sentinel-2 satellites.

iss061e004419 (Oct. 8, 2019) --- The cities of Villadiego, Villegas and Sasamon along the Rio Brulles are pictured in the Province of Burgos in northern Spain. The International Space Station was orbiting 254 miles above the historic and archaeologically significant region.

The Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth at 418 meters below sea level, and also one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth. This image was acquired by NASA's Terra spacecraft.

satellite image of Paris, France 2000

AS09-21-3299 (3-13 March 1969) --- Dallas-Fort Worth area as photographed from the Apollo 9 spacecraft during its Earth-orbital mission. The superhighways leading out of two cities are clearly visible. The largest body of water north of Dallas is the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir. Cedar Creek Reservoir is located to the southeast of Dallas. The City of Denton is near left center edge of picture at junction of two highways leading from Fort Worth and Dallas.

This image acquired by NASA's Terra satellite of northern Chile was acquired by ASTER on April 7, 2000. Dramatically displayed is a geological angular unconformity: a contact between layers of rock at different angles.

This image from NASA's Terra spacecraft shows Poyang Lake, which was once China's largest freshwater lake.

Mysterious figures Nazca desert from the aircraft

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 37 crew.

AS09-23-3586 (11 March 1969) --- Dallas, Ft. Worth, Sherman, Denison, Red River, and Lake Texoma, as photographed from the Apollo 9 spacecraft during its 122nd revolution of Earth.

Satellite view of Chongqing, China in 1978, 2001 and 2014. This before and after image shows urban expansion over the years.

This image from NASA's Terra spacecraft is of Franz Josef Land, an archipelago in the far north of Russia. It consists of 191 islands covering an area of about 200 by 325 km, and has no native inhabitants.

This image of the Nyiragonga volcano eruption in the Congo was acquired on January 28, 2002 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite.

iss053e180185 (Nov. 13, 2017) --- A portion of the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan and its snow-capped mountains are pictured with the tip of one of the International Space Station's main solar arrays in the foreground.

STS093-704-087 (23-27 July 1999) --- This low angle, early morning shot over Chile was photographed from the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Columbia during the STS-93 mission. In the words of one of the scientists studying the STS-93 Earth imagery, Laguna Verde, in the Atacama Province of Chile (near the Argentine border), lies like a turquoise jewel among the stark black and white snow covered volcanic peaks of the High Andes. The ambient elevation in this part of the Andes is 16,000 feet (4,877 meters) with the highest local peak, Nevada Ojas de Salado (just to the right of the lake), reaching to 23,240 feet. (7084 meters.)

The northernmost land in the world is located in Pearyland, Greenland. May 17, 2003. Satellite image.

Color satellite image of North Antelope Rochelle Mine in 2022. Located in Campbell County, Wyoming, USA, it is the largest coal mine in the world.

To show the kind of imagery that data from the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission will be used to produce, researchers pointed to a 2013 image of flooding extent in the Pacaya-Samaria National Reserve that used data from the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), an airborne system. In the image of this flood-prone area of the Amazonian jungle in Peru, black indicates open water, grayish-green is tropical forest, dark green is low-lying or floating vegetation, and red and pink are two different types of flooded vegetation. NISAR will offer detailed insights into the flooding patterns of the planet's wetland ecosystems, which will help researchers understand how these areas are being affected by climate change and human activity and the role they play in the global carbon cycle. NISAR is a joint mission of the U.S. and Indian space agencies. When in orbit, its sophisticated L- and S-band radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth's land

Color satellite image of Benin, with mask.

Southwestern US, with Las Vegas, NV in foreground, taken by X-15 Hycon HR-236 Camera during flt. 2-39-70 on June 27, 1965.

To show the kind of imagery that data from the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission will produce, researchers pointed to this composite image of a portion of the so-called arc of deforestation, a region on the southeast edge of the Amazonian jungle in Brazil where forests are being cleared at a fast pace through human activity. This three-color image shows change to the land cover in the Xingu River basin between 1996 (red) and 2007 (blue/green), using data from the Japanese L-band SAR satellites JERS-1 and ALOS-1, respectively. Black indicates areas converted from rainforest to agricultural land prior to 1996, and red shows the additional areas that had been cleared by 2007. NISAR will offer detailed insights into how the planet's forest ecosystems are changing over time, which will help researchers understand regional and global dynamics of deforestation and study the role of wooded areas in the global carbon cycle. NISAR could also help improve accounting of

iss061e063421 (Nov. 29, 2019) --- The Ougerta Range of mountains in Algeria is pictured as the International Space Station orbited 258 miles above the African nation.

AST-14-890 (18 July 1975) --- An oblique view of unique drainage patterns in southwestern Africa in the Rio Cuando area of Angola and South-West Africa, as photographed from the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit during the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. The picture was taken at an altitude of 223 kilometers (138 statute miles) with a 70mm Hasselblad camera using high-definition Ektachrome aerial SO-242 type film.

ISS005-E-21295 (23 November 2002) --- Fire scars in Australia are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 5 crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS). Bright orange fire scars show up the underlying dune sand in the Simpson Desert, 300 kilometers east of Alice Springs. The background is an intricate pattern of sand cordons that angles across the view from lower left to upper right. These cordons are now mostly green, showing that they have become generally static--tied down since they were formed by a vegetation mat of desert scrub. The fire scars were produced in a recent fire, probably within the last year. According to NASA scientists who are studying the Space Station photography, a time sequence of events can be interpreted. Fires first advanced into the view from the lower left--parallel with the major dune trend and dominant wind direction. Then the wind shifted direction by about 90 degrees so that fires advanced across the dunes in a serie

This is an image of the Kliuchevskoi volcano, Kamchatka, Russia, which began to erupt on September 30, 1994. Kliuchevskoi is the bright white peak surrounded by red slopes in the lower left portion of the image.

Antarctica's Byrd Glacier is a 15-mile (24-kilometer) wide, 100-mile (161-kilometer) long ice stream that plunges through a deep valley in the Transatlantic Mountains and into the Ross Ice Shelf.

NASA's Aqua spacecraft passed over Tropical Storm Don at 8:17 UTC (1:17 a.m. EDT) on July 29, 2011. Texas is experiencing exceptional drought conditions; Tropical Storm Don may bring relief.

This image of the San Francisco River channel, and its surrounding flood zone, in Brazil was acquired by band 3N of ASTER's Visible/Near Infrared sensor onboard NASA's Terra spacecraft.

Lake Chad, Chad, In 1975, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of Lake Chad, Chad. Image taken in 1975 using LANDSAT data.

Composite photo of London taken by Landsat 2 from 905 km (560 miles). Green, red and infrared recorded separately, 11am 29 July 1975. NASA photograph.

Satellite view of the State of Mizoram, India. This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

Satellite view of Togo (with border and mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

La Moinerie Lake Meteor Impact Crater, Canada, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of La Moinerie Lake impact structure, Canada (diameter : 8 km). Image taken on 24 August 1988 using LANDSAT data.

Diversity on Titan

NASA's Landsat 1 (originally named the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, or ERTS) was the first of what was to become a series of satellites designed to map and monitor the Earth's land surfaces.

STS059-S-084 (17 April 1994) --- This is a three-dimensional perspective of Mammoth Mountain, California. This view was constructed by overlaying a SIR-C radar image on a U.S. Geological Survey digital elevation map. Vertical exaggeration is 2x. The image is centered at 37.6 degrees north, 119.0 degrees west. It was acquired from the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its 67th orbit, April 13, 1994. In this color representation, red is C-Band HV-polarization, green is C-Band VV-polarization and blue is the ratio of C-Band VV to C-Band HV. Blue areas are smooth and yellow areas are rock outcrops with varying amounts of snow and vegetation. Crowley Lake is in the foreground and Highway 395 crosses in the middle of the image. Mammoth Mountain is shown in the upper right. SIR-C/X-SAR is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE). SIR-C/X-SAR radars illuminate Earth with microwaves allowing detailed observat

Satellite view of Mali (with border and mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

Aerial view of the Nazca lines with visible geometric shapes in the desert, the geoglyphs and images in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

Nazca geoglyphs are visible on the dry surface landscape of the desert, the geoglyphs and drawings in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

Color satellite image of Mal, iwith borders and mask.

Austral winter and spring in Queensland's Brigalow Belt as seen by NASA's Terra spacecraft.

Great Barrier Reef - August 8th, 1999 Description What might be mistaken for dinosaur bones being unearthed at a paleontological dig are some of the individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest tropical coral reef system. The reef stretches more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) along the coast of Queensland, Australia. It supports astoundingly complex and diverse communities of marine life and is the largest structure on the planet built by living organisms.

These two false-color images of the Manaus region of Brazil in South America were acquired by NASA's Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar on board the space shuttle Endeavour.

Impressive geoglyphs and line patterns in the dry Nazca Desert, The geoglyphs and drawings in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

Relief map of the State of Colorado, United States. This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites combined with elevation data.

Several oil slicks occurred on Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela between December 2002 and January 2003, and were observed by NASA's Terra spacecraft on December 26, 2002.

Satellites Assess Earthquake Damage in Turkey. The magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and western Syria on February 6, 2023, caused widespread destruction in both countries. The initial, stronger earthquake emanated from a fault 11 miles (18 kilometers) below the surface. The shallow depth meant the earthquake produced violent shaking that affected areas hundreds of miles from the epicenter, 16 miles (26 kilometers) east of the city of Nurdağı, Turkey. The second quake followed nine hours later, striking 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep, roughly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) south-southeast of the Turkish town of Ekinözü. Hundreds of smaller aftershocks occurred in subsequent days. The preliminary damage proxy map above shows parts of the Turkish cities of Islahiye, Kahramanmaras, and Nurdağı. Dark red pixels represent areas likely to have severe damage to buildings, homes, and infrastructure or changes to landscape, while orange and yellow areas are moderately or par

Cloud vortices off Heard Island, south Indian Ocean. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASAs Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of sea ice off Heard Island on Nov 2, 2015 at 5 02 AM EST (09 20 UTC).

On Saturday, April 17, 2010, NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft obtained this pair of images of the continuing eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajkull volcano. On the left, new black ash deposits are visible on the ground.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of the San Gabriel Mountains and Los Angeles Basin where have burned more than 4,900 acres since June 20, sending up plumes of smoke visible to many in the Los Angeles basin.

These images, taken by the MISR instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft , are centered over the Pacific Ocean, about 1600 kilometers west of San Francisco. 3D glasses are necessary to view this image.

This image from NASA's Terra spacecraft shows the town of Kirkenes in northernmost Norway, with its 3400 inhabitants, as they prepare for an expected boom as a shipping hub, as global warming has led to the opening up of the Northern Sea Route.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Aerial view of geometric lines on a barren desert landscape, the geoglyphs and images in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

Relief map of the State of Colorado, United States. This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites combined with elevation data.

One of the most volcanically active regions of the world is the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia, Russia. It is not uncommon for several volcanoes to be erupting at the same time. NASA's Terra satellite acquired this image on April 26, 2007

Nazca lines in a vast desert area with geometric patterns seen from the air, The geoglyphs and drawings in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

Color satellite image of Ouagadougou, capital city of Burkina Faso. Image collected on April 20, 2017 by Sentinel-2 satellites.

Kilauea volcano, Hawaii, began erupting on December 20, 2020, when a lava flow within Halema'uma'u crater interacted with a pool of water, triggering a vigorous eruption, emitting steam, ash, and sulfur dioxide gas. Since then, lava continues to enter the crater, and the lava lake appears to be stable. In the image, the lava feeder is bright red within the crater, gas is coming from the lava; the lava lake is a lighter gray donut, with a cooler lava island in the middle. The image was acquired December 28, 2020, covers an area of 29.7 by 37.2 km, and is located at 19.4 degrees north, 155.3 degrees west.

The prion protein, shown in red, can become infectious and cause neurodegenerative disease. Here, four nerve cells in a mouse illustrate how the infectious prion protein moves through cells along neurites' threadlike connections that nerve cells use to communicate with adjacent cells.

This image from NASA's Terra satellite ofYugoslavia was acquired on July 28, 2000 during Terra orbit 3248.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as Egypt.

Mysterious figures Nazca desert from the aircraft

Nazca lines from the aircraft Mysterious figures Nazca desert from the aircraft Copyright: xZoonar.com/MassimoxLamax 12056691

Retreat of Alaskas Columbia Glacier; Satellite image shows the state of glacier melting in 2016

Clear geometric lines that run through a sandy, dry landscape, the geoglyphs and drawings in the desert near Nasca and Palpa in Peru

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