Sitting in the course of the Iranian plateau, the Dasht-e Kavir, or Nice Salt Desert, is the planet’s twenty fourth largest desert. From the bottom, the desolate sand dues and bordering mountain vary are imposing and exquisite. From above, you get a wholly totally different perspective. The US Geological Survey-operated Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc captured a shocking picture of the Dasht-e Kavir from above (seen beneath) means again in 2000. The Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc operated from 1999-2024.
The Dasht-e Kavir, or Nice Salt Desert, is the most important desert in Iran. It’s primarily uninhabited wasteland, composed of mud and salt marshes lined with crusts of salt that shield the meager moisture from utterly evaporating. This picture was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc on October 24, 2000. It’s a false-color composite picture made utilizing infrared, inexperienced and pink wavelengths. The picture has additionally been sharpened utilizing the sensor’s panchromatic band. Credit score: NASA/USGS Landsat 7; NASA Earth Observatory
The Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc isn’t the one craft capturing lovely pictures of our planet from above. Different satellites and crew members on the Worldwide Area Station have additionally documented Earth, taking photographs of all over the place from Georgia, USA to the islands of New Caledonia within the South Pacific.
In a dense swampland in Georgia, simply north of the Florida border, you discover the headwaters of the Suwannee River (higher proper). The Suwannee is named a “blackwater river” due to its dark-brown waters laden with natural materials. This river system has been known as one of the vital pristine in america, however some environmental pressures are placing that distinction in jeopardy.
In contrast to different blackwater rivers, the Suwannee maintains its inky coloration alongside its total 400-kilometer (250-mile) journey to the ocean. When the river lastly meets the Gulf of Mexico alongside Florida’s Large Bend—that portion of coast the place the state’s panhandle curves to satisfy its peninsula—its darkish waters act like a tracer, revealing the place the river water mixes with the ocean.
That mixing was on show on February 20, 2015, when the Operational Land Imager on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite tv for pc captured this view. Credit score: NASA Earth Observatory picture by Dr. Alice Alonso, utilizing Landsat satellite tv for pc knowledge from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption tailored from Laura Rocchio, NASA Landsat Science Outreach.
Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar mud, chunks of sea ice drift by means of sleek swirls of grease ice within the frigid waters of Foxe Basin close to Baffin Island within the Canadian Arctic. Sea ice usually begins as grease ice, a soupy slick of tiny ice crystals on the ocean’s floor. Because the temperature drops, grease ice thickens and coalesces into slabs of extra stable ice.
This picture was acquired on August 4, 2002, by the Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc. Credit score: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7
This picture, displaying tidal flats and channels on Lengthy Island, within the Bahamas, was taken by an Expedition 26 crew member onboard the Worldwide Area Station. The islands of the Bahamas within the Caribbean Sea are located on massive platforms made primarily from carbonate sediments ringed by fringing reefs — the islands themselves are solely the elements of the platform at present uncovered above sea degree. The sediments are fashioned largely from the skeletal stays of organisms settling to the ocean ground; over geologic time, these sediments will consolidate to kind carbonate sedimentary rocks comparable to limestone. Darker blue reveals deeper water, whereas gentle blue-green reveals shallow water on the tidal flat. The frequently uncovered elements of the island are seen in brown, a results of soil formation and vegetation development (left). Credit score: Expedition 26 crew member onboard the Worldwide Area Station, courtesy of NASAEach summer time, phytoplankton unfold throughout the northern basins of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with blooms spanning lots of and generally 1000’s of miles. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters have a tendency to advertise extra development amongst marine vegetation and phytoplankton than is present in tropical waters. Blooms in summer time 2018 off Scandinavia appear to be significantly intense.
On July 18, 2018, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a natural-color picture of a swirling inexperienced phytoplankton bloom within the Gulf of Finland, a piece of the Baltic Sea. Observe how the phytoplankton hint the sides of a vortex; it’s potential that this ocean eddy is pumping up vitamins from the depths. Credit score: NASA Earth Observatory pictures by Joshua Stevens and Lauren Dauphin, utilizing Landsat knowledge from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS knowledge from LANCE/EOSDIS Fast Response
From NASA’s Operation IceBridge marketing campaign in Alaska: A excessive altitude view of Icy Bay, within the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness. Only a century in the past, this physique of water was lined in ice. Credit score: NASAMaybe essentially the most spectacular of cloud formations, cumulonimbus (from the Latin for “pile” and “rain cloud”) clouds kind as a consequence of vigorous convection (rising and overturning) of heat, moist and unstable air. Floor air is warmed by the sun-heated floor floor and rises; if enough atmospheric moisture is current, water droplets will condense because the air mass encounters cooler air at larger altitudes. The air mass itself additionally expands and cools because it rises as a consequence of lowering atmospheric stress, a course of often known as adiabatic cooling. Any such convection is widespread in tropical latitudes year-round and through the summer time season at larger latitudes.
The picture, taken whereas the Worldwide Area Station was positioned over western Africa close to the Senegal-Mali border, reveals a totally fashioned anvil cloud with quite a few smaller cumulonimbus towers rising close to it. Credit score: NASA
The Mackenzie River in Canada performs a significant function in Arctic local weather as hotter contemporary water mixes with chilly seawater. This picture was taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite tv for pc on July 18, 2017. Credit score: Supply: NASA/USGS Landsat 8; Norman Kuring, GSFCThis lovely picture, taken on 11 January 2001, reveals a geological formation within the Maur Adrar Desert in Mauritania, Africa. Often called the “Richat Construction,” this snail-shell-like formation was created when a volcanic dome hardened and steadily eroded, exposing onion-like layers of rock. Credit score: NASA/U.S. Geological Survey/Landsat-7/Goddard Area Flight MiddleDagze Co (Lake) is one in every of many inland lakes in Tibet. In glacial instances, the area was significantly wetter, and lakes have been correspondingly a lot bigger. That is evident by the quite a few fossil shorelines that circle the lake, and attest to the presence of a bigger, deeper lake. Modifications in local weather have resulted in higher aridity of the Tibetan Plateau, and drying up of the lakes. Picture taken by the Superior Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on October 8, 2001. Credit score: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science StaffGuinea-Bissau is a small nation in West Africa. Advanced patterns may be seen within the shallow waters alongside its shoreline, the place silt carried by the Geba and different rivers washes out into the Atlantic Ocean. Picture taken by Landsat 7 on December 1, 2000. Credit score: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7Within the fashion of Van Gogh’s portray ‘Starry Evening,’ large congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dead of night water round Gotland, a Swedish island within the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine vegetation that kind the primary hyperlink in almost all ocean meals chains. Inhabitants explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, just like the one proven right here, happen when deep currents deliver vitamins as much as sunlit floor waters, fueling the expansion and replica of those tiny vegetation. Picture taken by Landsat 7 on July 13, 2005. Credit score: USGS/NASA/Landsat 7This picture, taken on January 22, 2001 by the Landsat-7 satellite tv for pc, reveals Akpatok Island, which lies in Ungava Bay in Canada. Accessible solely by air, Akpatok Island rises out of the water as sheer cliffs that soar 500 to 800 ft (150 to 243 meters) above the ocean floor. The island is a crucial sanctuary for cliff-nesting seabirds. Quite a few ice floes across the island entice walruses and whales, making Akpatok a standard looking floor for native Inuit individuals. Credit score: NASA/USGS Landsat 7 satellite tv for pc; NASA Earth Observatory
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