Nikumaroro Atoll

It is one of the most famous patches of coral outside of the Great Barrier Reef. Stretching a mere 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) by 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) and surrounded by deep ocean, it is barely a speck on world maps. Though uninhabited today, Nikumaroro atoll is noteworthy for someone who likely had a short and ill-fated residence there: Amelia Earhart.

Nearly 1,000 miles from Fiji, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, this South Pacific island is essentially a sandbar atop a coral reef atop a subsiding deep-sea volcano. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a natural-color image of the tiny island on July 28, 2014.

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James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

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