Tyndall Glacier is located in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This glacier, which has a total area of 331 square kilometers and a length of 32 kilometers (based on 1996 measurements), begins in the Patagonian Andes Mountains to the west and terminates in Lago Geikie.
In October 2007, strong, dry Santa Ana winds raised a major dust plume and several minor plumes on the Baja California peninsula. The light brown dust spread west to the Pacific Ocean (image top right). Because they are warm, dry, and strong, Santa Ana winds reduce soil moisture and famously promote dust storms such as this.
New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, sits at the southwestern tip of North Island near the Cook Strait. The city in the second largest in New Zealand (after Auckland), and at 41 south latitude, it is the southernmost capital city in the world. The North and South Islands of New Zealand are located along the active Australian-Pacific tectonic plate boundary. The glancing collision of these two tectonic plates results in uplift of the land surface, expressed as low hills on North Island and the Southern Alps on South Island.
Marsh Island, located along the southwestern coastline of Louisiana, is a remnant of an abandoned lobe of the Mississippi River Delta formed approximately 5,000–7,500 years ago. It is composed primarily of organic-rich muds and brackish marsh vegetation, but some peat (layers of vegetation that have partially decomposed while submerged in water) is also present.
The small island of Blanquilla is named for its white sand beaches, visible in this astronaut photograph as a bright border along the northeastern–eastern shoreline. Surface currents extending from the western coastline of the island are caused by easterly trade winds. This dominant wind has also caused movement of beach sand to form white “fingers” extending inland along the east coast.
Mazatlán is Mexico’s largest port, situated on one of the best estuaries (bottom center of image) on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The city appears as a series of light-toned geometric blocks covering the center of this astronaut photograph. The image also shows the docks and naval yards that line the north side of the estuary. Mazatlán (population 352,000 in 2005) is growing northward from the downtown peninsula, with tourist beaches backed by hotels, and a marina and golf courses just beyond. No city growth yet appears on the south side of the estuary, where narrow rectangles of farm land can be seen.
Located in the northern Gulf of California, Isla (island) San Lorenzo and Isla Las Animas—part of the Midriff Islands—record geologic processes involved in the creation of the Baja California peninsula over several hundred million years. This astronaut photograph illustrates the largely pristine nature of these islands. The islands are located in the rain shadow of mountains on the Baja Peninsula to the west, and arid conditions prevail through much of the year. The scarcity of water has limited human presence on the islands, and allowed flora and fauna unique to each island to flourish, particularly reptiles.
stronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this image of a major dust storm (image center and right) along the east side of the Aral Sea while passing over central Asia in the spring of 2007. The white, irregular lines along the bottom of the image are salt and clay deposits on the present coastline. The day that the ISS crew shot the image, winds were blowing from the west (lower left).
This astronaut photograph highlights a portion of the Saskatchewan River delta extending into Cedar Lake in the province of Manitoba, Canada. The Saskatchewan River watershed extends from the Rocky Mountains of Alberta through the plains of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the east. Flooding of the Cedar Lake basin following the construction of the Grand Rapids Dam (to the southeast, not shown) in the 1960s created shallow, muddy lakes and bogs (dark green and blue irregular areas).
The Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the largest open-pit mines in the world, measuring over 4 kilometers wide and 1,200 meters deep. Mining first began in Bingham Canyon in the late nineteenth century, when shafts were sunk to remove gold, silver, and lead deposits that played out by the early 1900s. It would take the advent of open-pit mining in 1899 to turn the Bingham copper deposit into an economically favorable resource.
The Falkland Islands are an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, referred to by Argentina (which also claims the islands) as the Islas Malvinas. Falkland Sound, which is 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) wide at the narrow point, separates the main islands of East Falkland (image center) and West Falkland (along image left). Together they total about the same area as Connecticut or Northern Ireland. The islands lie almost 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the Argentine coast and less than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Antarctica. The first flights to these remote islands were only implemented in 1971.
Lake McConaughy and a tan-and-green patchwork of thousands of agricultural fields dominate this astronaut photo of western Nebraska and northeastern Colorado. The astronaut who shot this view was looking towards the east-northeast, focusing on the thin, green lines of the floodplains of the North and South Platte rivers. These join to form the Platte River near image upper right.
In the northwest corner of Colorado, the west-flowing Yampa River meets the south-flowing Green River, which runs into Utah. Stretches of both river canyons upstream and downstream from the junction make up Dinosaur National Monument. The monument takes its name, of course, from the abundant fossils found in exposed valleys and low ridges of the Morrison Formation, a series of rock layers that were formed late in the Jurassic Period, roughly 145 million years ago.
Simushir is a deserted, 5-mile-wide volcanic island in the Kuril Islands chain, half way between northern Japan and the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. Four volcanoes—Milne, Prevo, Urataman, and Zavaritski—have built cones tall enough to rise above the green forest. The remaining remnant of Zavaritski Volcano is a caldera, formed when a volcano collapses into its emptied magma chamber.
The Nardò Ring is a striking visual feature from space, and astronauts have photographed it several times. The Ring is a race car test track; it is 12.5 kilometers long and steeply banked to reduce the amount of active steering needed by drivers. Although it is a perfect circle, it appears oval in this photograph. This distortion is because the astronaut’s viewing angle was 35 degrees, looking back along the orbit track to the southwest from the International Space Station’s window.
Shiveluch is one of the biggest and most active of a line of volcanoes that follow the spine of the Kamchatka Peninsula in easternmost Russia. The volcanoes and peninsula are part of the tectonically active “Ring of Fire,” a zone of active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes that nearly surrounds the Pacific Ocean.
he southern tip of Spain and the northern tip of Africa come close to touching at the Strait of Gibraltar. The small Spanish enclave Ceuta occupies a narrow isthmus of land on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar; the rest of the surrounding territory is Morocco.
While weather and Earth science satellites are known for getting a perspective on storms as they orbit the Earth, they were not the only sensors viewing Hurricane Dean from high above. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station and the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour passed over the storm on August 18.
On August 13, 2007, while docked to the International Space Station (ISS), the crew members of Shuttle Mission STS-118 and ISS Expedition 15 reported seeing the smoke plumes from wide-spread fires across Idaho and Montana. The crew photographed and downlinked images of isolated plumes and regional views of the smoke from different perspectives.
In June 2007, the Space Shuttle crew visiting the International Space Station (ISS) observed spectacular polar mesospheric clouds over north-central Asia. TThe red-to-dark region at the bottom of the image is the dense part of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Béchar Basin of northwest Algeria formed as layers of sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic Era (250-540 million years ago) folded and cracked during collisions of Africa and Europe during the Tertiary Period (2-65 million years ago). In this photograph of part of the basin captured by astronauts, dark brown to tan folded ridges of these Paleozoic sedimentary layers extend across the image from top to bottom.
his astronaut photograph captures the dense urban fabric of Brooklyn, New York City’s largest borough (population of 2.6 million), characterized by the regular pattern of highly reflective building rooftops (white). Two main arteries from Manhattan into Brooklyn—the famous Brooklyn Bridge and neighboring Manhattan Bridge—cross the East River along the left (north) side of the image.
Upheaval Dome is a striking geologic structure in the Canyonlands National Park of southern Utah. The alternating rock layers make a nearly circular, 5.5-kilometer- (3.4-mile-) diameter “bull’s-eye.” This photograph of Upheaval Dome was taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station. The oblique viewing angle—in other words, not looking straight down—provides a sense of the topography within and around the structure. The dome appears more like an ellipse than a circle due to the oblique viewing perspective.
The Great Salt Lake of northern Utah is a remnant of glacial Lake Bonneville that extended over much of present-day western Utah and into the neighboring states of Nevada and Idaho approximately 32,000 to 14,000 years ago. The north arm of the lake, displayed in this astronaut photograph from April 30, 2007, typically has twice the salinity of the rest of the lake due to impoundment of water by a railroad causeway that crosses the lake from east to west. The causeway restricts water flow, and the separation has led to a striking division in the types of algae and bacteria found in the north and south arms of the lake.
This astronaut photograph depicts the narrow strait between Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela. The brackish lake sits on top of a vast reservoir of buried oil deposits.
Maryland’s Patuxent River Naval Air Station is located on a small peninsula, bordered by the Patuxent River to the north-northeast and Chesapeake Bay to the east and southeast. International Space Station crews frequently use the Patuxent River Naval Air Station as a geographic reference point and photographic training target. This astronaut photograph illustrates why—the distinctive pattern of the airfield runways and the station’s location in Chesapeake Bay make it easy to spot from orbit.
The Southern Patagonian Icefield of Chile and Argentina hosts several spectacular glaciers—including Grey Glacier located in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This glacier, which in 1996 had a measured total area of 270 square kilometers and a length of 28 kilometers (104 square miles in area, 17 miles long), begins in the Patagonian Andes Mountains to the west and terminates in three distinct lobes into Grey Lake (upper image).
The iceberg A22A was photographed when it was about a third of the distance from South America towards Cape Town, South Africa. A22A is one of the largest icebergs to drift as far north as 50 degrees south latitude, bringing it beneath the daylight path of the International Space Station (ISS). A series of parallel lines can be seen in the lower image. These are probably “hummocks,” dunes of snow that have solidified, and they date back to the time when the iceberg was connected to Antarctica. A developing fracture in the ice can be seen in the lower, detailed view.
Everglades National Park in southern Florida is the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. Known as the “river of grass,” the Everglades wetlands and wooded uplands host a variety of endangered species including crocodiles, manatees, and panthers.