Vishnu, an Earth Observatory reader, posed a great question after viewing “The Six-Million Mile View of Earth and Moon“: “I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ‘photoshopped’ to remove background stars, or is that angle so narrow and the background space so coincidentally ’empty’ that no visible stars are there […]
Floods Devastate Pakistan For the second straight year, torrential monsoon-driven rains have swamped portions of Pakistan. The AFP reports that more than 200 people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes. Researchers associated with the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite recently posted an eye-opening set of images that shows the condition of the swollen Indus […]
Once upon a time Landsat images were expensive (Landsat 7 data was $600 per scene, and the earlier satellites were even pricier) and difficult to find. Now the data—which dates to 1972—is free, and reasonably easy (or at least not painfully difficult) to browse and download from the Global Visualization Viewer, or even the Google […]
Two more images that don’t quite fit on the main site: Nabro Volcano and the Riley Road Fire near Houston. Nabro VolcanoThis long-dormant Eritrean volcano began erupting in June, but it’s so remote (at least for western media and scientists) that there’s been no news from the area for months. Unfortunately it’s often been […]
Written by Jesse Allen, EO data visualizer… Recently while doing something work-related (yes, really!), I stumbled upon a fascinating story. I found the Gates of Hell. It turns out that they are in Turkmenistan. They were built — in a manner of speaking — by the former Soviet Union in 1971. In 1971, Turkmenistan was a […]
Sometimes I’ll find a surprise in a satellite image. In this case, kilometer-tall letters that spell out “LUECKE” near Austin, TX (Near the Bastrop Fire): Although this could have just been a curiosity for passing pilots and astronauts, it turns out that Johnson Space Center scientists used the letters to estimate the maximum resolution of […]
As the world reflects on the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the Earth Observatory team has been struggling with what to say and do. Like so many other media outlets, we felt compelled to say something, to show something. Our data visualization team found this: a previously unpublished […]
Post from Paul Przyborski, EO programmer… For the past few weeks, we have quietly implemented a new way of viewing images on Earth Observatory. Some of you may have noticed that there is now a “view image comparison” button on some of our Natural Hazards images, as well as on this Image of the Day. You […]
Behold the Mesmerizing Flow of Antarctic Ice The first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica slid off Science’s presses last month and hit the media with a splash. The BBC, New York Times, Climate Central and dozens of other publications highlighted the news and linked to this striking visualization […]
