NASA Satellites Capture Earth As You’ve Never Seen It
Really! "Earth As Art," a free e-book from NASA, shows off surreal photos of Earth with light taken outside the visible spectrum. Here are 19 of our favorites.
It’s already unlikely we’ll get a view as good as the ones collected in “Earth As Art,” a new, free e-book from NASA. The collection has years’ worth of beautiful satellite photos from around the world, reaching across Africa to Asia to Antarctica. But what’s even more interesting, as NASA scientist Lawrence Friedl points out in the introduction, is that “these satellites can measure light outside of the visible range, so the images show more than what is visible to the naked eye.” Here are our favorites.
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Kalahari Desert, Southern Africa
Byrd Glacier, Antarctica
Pinacate Volcano Field, Mexico
Desolation Canyon, United States
Rocky Mountain Trench, Canada
Nazca Lines, Peru
Mayn River, Russia
Wadi Branches, Jordan
Akpatok Island, Canada
Gravity Waves, Above the Indian Ocean
Garden City, United States
Vatnajökull Glacier Ice Cap, Iceland
Himalayas, Central Asia
Kuril Islands, Sea of Okhotsk
Meandering Mississippi, United States
Great Salt Desert, Iran
Carnegie Lake, Australia
Edrengiyn Nuruu, Mongolia
Paraná River Delta, Argentina