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Earth Observatory Image of the Day

NASA's view of the Earth from the Earth Observatory.

Over millions of years, water has sculpted limestone in northern Vietnam into an extraordinary karst landscape full of towers, cones,...

Deep green variable elevation foliage dominates the center of the image labeled Fengcong Karst. To the right some buildings and roads divide this from the nearby smaller but similarly landscaped area labeled fenglin Karst. At the right edge of the image is a densely built up area, the remainder of the image is relatively sparse human settlements and roads with more moderately green colored fields.

Hurricane Melissa left the island nation’s forests brown and battered, but they won’t stay that way for long.

The coastal portion of Jamaica at black river. The land is largely a muted green and brown shade with the Caribbean Sea in the lower left.

Satellites are helping land managers track ecological shifts as reserves reconnect and landscapes return to a more natural state.

the sharp outlines of the thornybush nature preserve are outlined, but also colored in with the start contrast of a negative canopy cover change compared to the surrounding area that is generally all positive, appearing green vs the negative canopy which is brown.

Late-season reds and browns swept across the Ozark Highlands in the south-central U.S.

The landscape of Missouri includes tan, sage and a rich auburn. The auburn color is particularly dense around areas labeled the St. Francois and Boston Mountains.

The volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula continues to erupt after centuries of quiescence.

a snow covered volcano peak has an interior ring of smooth snow labeled the caldera rim, a dark streak labeled lava to the upper left and the craggy peaks and valleys of the Kamchatka peninsula surrounding.

An astronaut photographed the island’s striking mix of mountains, forests, and expanding urban areas.

Puerto Rico photographed from space with light sporadic clouds and surrounded by a rich blue-green ocean.

Sea ice around the southernmost continent hit one of its lowest seasonal highs since the start of the satellite record.

A yellow ring around Antarctica indicates the median ice coverage around antarctica.

Drought in the Nueces River basin is reducing reservoir levels, leaving residents and industry in the Corpus Christi area facing...

Choke Canyon Reservoir and Lake Corpus Christi are diminished and the banks do not reach as far as they used to.

The tropical cyclones are close enough in proximity that they may influence one another.

Two sets of swirling clouds over the rich blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean, with Tropical Storm Imelda blocking the lower East Coast but just off Florida's coastline.

In late September 2025, a continued lack of rainfall led to stunted vegetation, lowered water levels, and prompted early fall...

Two maps of the Northeast of the United States the left showing drought intensity in increasingly dark orange shades where drought is worst. On the right is root zone soil wetness with everything from long island North and East are darker shades of orange indicating dryer conditions.

A Gulf Coast storm followed by snowmelt in January 2025 temporarily increased the Mississippi River’s outflow, sending a surge of...

the bright orange sediment of the Mississippi river empties into the blue waters of the gulf. Barrier islands off shore to the right New Orleans and mashland to the left. The city a bright white color and the surrounding land dark and marsh are brown.

The colossal project created a valuable connection between the U.S. interior and the Atlantic Ocean when it opened in October...

Map of New York state highlights the path of the Erie Canal in dark blue, traversing through Lockport Rochester, Oneida Lake, Utica and terminating at Albany.

The super typhoon headed for Guangdong province after lashing Taiwan and northern Luzon in the Philippines.

Swirling white clouds off the coast of China, also mostly covered by clouds with some green foliage covered landscape visible. Taiwan and the Philippines are both completely obscured by clouds, but the island outlines are overlaid on the image.

Hillsides in Alaska’s interior showed their changing colors ahead of the autumnal equinox.

The Tanana River meanders along the left side of the image, farmland left of the river and mountains to the right. Lake George and Healy Lakeare filled with dark blue water at the feet of the mountains, divided from the river by little distance. The mountain peaks appear more yellow before they give way to the green valleys between them.

Astronauts and much of Earth’s population had a chance to view a coppery “Blood Moon” during a total lunar eclipse...

The moon, the upper portion a dark orange to brown hue, the lower lit brightly white.

Sediment from the riverbed, especially during periods of higher flow, helps shape the surrounding beaches and sandbars.

Rio Lúrio curves through the landscape, carving a light beige path that terminates in a weaving delta along the coastline of Baía do Lúrio just above a wetland that stretches to a barrier island.

Satellite data show decades of gradual but persistent change to forests around one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s...

a color gradient map ranging from indigo to yellow corresponding to forrest loss over time where yellow is more recent and indigo is from 2001. The forest loss consolidates around Congo river and tributaries, particularly spreading away from Kisangani

Satellite data show that Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent on September 10, 2025.

A top down view of Earth at the North Pole. A yellow ring highlights the median ice pack from 1981-2010 and this year's ice pack is shown fully within that ring.

Another major tributary reached the Australian outback lake in 2025, extending the months-long flood of the vast, ephemeral inland sea.

Lake Eyre is shown on the left the northern portion a vibrant bright blue and the southern is a rich saturated blue. Warburton creek, bright green, feeds into the lake at the top and Cooper Creek connects Lake Eyre to Lake Killamperpunna, a much smaller lake, in the lower right.

Winding across the Jeannie catchment in northern Queensland, the river sustains diverse ecosystems on its way to the Coral Sea.

The coral sea, light blue, occupies the upper right half of the image, with Australia occupying the lower left. The Altanmoui Range is labeled in the upper left corner, the peaks appear sage green with the land to the right being more sandy and beige. Howick River and Sandy Creek near the coast are more green in color and the land a lighter shade, more like the coastal sand at Red Point right of these rivers.

Smoke filled river valleys in northeastern Washington and parts of British Columbia.

the Pacific Northwest along the U.S. Canada Border. The national and state borders are overlayed on the landscape and labeled. Smoke Emanates from the Lynx Mountain fire in Washinton near the Colombia River. The smoke streams north and is most dense in river valleys. Smoke obscures Upper Arrow and Kootenay Lake in British Colombia.

The nighttime lightscape of Argentina’s largest metropolitan area reveals transportation corridors and variations in lighting types.

The Buenos Aires streets glow with light from human activity. Train lines, major roadways and the airports are all distinctly visible and labeled. The lights fade the farther inland you look at the image with a completely dark Rio de la Plata occupying the upper right portion of the image. One distinct dark swath within the illuminated streets of greater Buenos Aires is a Military base. San Fernando in the upper left and San Justo, southwest of Buenos Aires, appear to have more auburn colored lights than the rest of the image.

A group of satellites with interferometric synthetic aperture radar makes it possible for geologists to detect how much and where...

The southern tip of a triangular peninsula is showed with a color gradient overlay where uplift is a shade of red and subsidence is shown in blue. The southern tip is red, increasingly dark toward the south. Krasheninnikova is labeled in the northern part of the image with slight uplift in a region of neutral to subsiding elevation. The Earthquake epicenter of July 29 is labeled off the coastline on the Okhotsk plate just left of the Kuril Kamchatka Trench that denotes the border from that plate to the Pacific plate.

A moderately intense season of surface melting left part of the ice sheet dirty gray in summer 2025, but snowfall...

The entire right half of the image is covered in fresh bright white snow and the Saqqap Glacier that extends from the ice pack into the lake spotted gray landscape

Across the northeastern Siberian tundra, summer greens shift to vibrant reds, yellows, and browns as temperatures drop and days shorten.

Rust red dominates the landscape, disrupted by a river and Onemen Bay just left of center in the image. Anadyr is labeled at the tip of the peninsula between the bay and Gulf of Anadyr at the right edge of the image. The water is near black in color.

Heavy rains and flooding across the country since June 2025 have displaced millions of people, devastated infrastructure, and submerged farmland.

Jalalapur Pirwala is labeled at the convergence of multiple visibly widened rivers in Pakistan, including Chenab and Sutlej. Lahore is labeled upstream on the Ravi river. The Indus river is labeled center left of the image, but is not overly engorged like the other rivers. The landscape between the rivers is vibrant green in this image and the sporadic cloud coverage appears light blue.

Satellites have observed episodes of dust swirling across the basin in western China for decades.

An oblong light and smooth beige region is labeled the Takla Makan Desert. Mountainous regions surround the area top and bottom, the bottom is mostly cloud covered and the upper mountains are tan in color with some green foliage sporadically located amid the peaks and valleys. Kuqa is labeled at the center of the upper region. The entire Desert and somewhat to the upper region, dust partially obscures.

The storm became a major hurricane while traversing the eastern Pacific but weakened as it approached the islands.

The image shows the deep blue waters of the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii. The islands have been outlined in white on the image and cities of Hilo and Honolulu labeled. A swirl of bright white clouds is off the coast to the right of the islands and sporadic cloud coverage occupies much of the image.

Researchers are using satellites to study development patterns in this fast-growing city in Ethiopia.

The image shows the expanding city of Mekele which includes planned development and an industrial park on the left side of the city. The surrounding landscape primarily appears shades of yellow and orange.

The glow of city lights, the aurora, and a rising Moon illuminate the night along the northwest coast of North...

The West coast of the United States and Canada at night shows the city lighting of Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton. The green lights of the aurora is visible on the left edge of the image.

A landmass that was once encased in the ice of the Alsek Glacier is now surrounded by water.

The vibrant baby blue waters of Alsek Lake are surrounded by rich green forest and white capped mountains and slightly grayer glaciers. On the right side of the of the lake is Prow Knob, a vibrant green island right at the edge of Alsek glacier.

A prolonged high-pressure weather system brought unusually warm September temperatures to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.

Map of the Western United states with state boundaries overlaid in white and a color overlay gradient corresponding to temperature. Dark red equates to 40 degrees C or more and the colors gradually become lighter shades of orange as temperatures lessen. East Washington and the California Valley down to Phoenix all represent some of the highest temperatures and darked colors.

Lightning likely ignited several large fires that sent smoke pouring over the Canadian province in early September 2025.

Solid cloud cover obscured the Pacific Ocean, labeled in the lower left corner of the image. Dense smoke obscures the land horizontally from the upper left to the center right in a fairly thick band, but land is visible above and below. There is also smoke emanating from the very center of the image, below the image wide band of smoke.

Images spanning nearly four decades reveal the shapeshifting nature of the Yarlung Zangbo River as it flows across the Tibetan...

The Yarlung Zangbo River braids across the valley that runs horizontally across this image. Mountainous peaks fill the landscape both above and below the river..

An asteroid that struck the rainforest in Africa around 1 million years ago created Ghana’s only natural lake.

Lake Bosumtwi, a rich blue hue, is surrounded on all sides by elevated land rich green foliage. There are a patchwork of tan color human settlements within the foliage, and one major region is built up in the top left that seems to be building in the direction of the lake.

An oblique photo from the International Space Station captured haze spilling from valleys in Italy and France and streaming south...

The image shows the peninsula of Italy stretching to the top of the image with the snow capped Alps in the foreground. The Adriatic Sea in the upper left gives way to haze that covers the Po Valley in a haze. Etna is labeled at the upper right.

New York City’s Manhattan Island was the site of the nation’s first Labor Day parade on September 5, 1882.

The image shows Manhattan and the surrounding regions, from top to bottom there are labeled areas, Bryant Park, Union Square Park, and City Hall Park.

Far from large urban areas, Great Basin National Park offers unencumbered views of the night sky and opportunities to study...

The nighttime view of the Western United States with state boundary overlay includes the city lights of Salt Lake City and Las Vegas and a few small outcroppings of lights. In the midst of the darkest region is an orange outline for the borders of Great Basin National Park.

A powerful supercell storm left a trail of damage spanning hundreds of kilometers southeast of Calgary, Canada.

The upper left corner shows the human settlement of Calgary as a distinctly gray amorphous dot on the landscape. Along the left border of the image appears to be deep green foliage covered slightly mountainous landscape. The vast majority of the image is covered in speckled and gridded farmed fields with a distinct path of discoloration stretching horizontally across the bulk of the image labeled hail scar.

Tides and sediment form brushstroke-like patterns across the river estuary in eastern Sumatra.

Yellow waters stream out of the Rokan River from the bottom right corner of the image, blending with the blue waters of the strait of Malacca in the upper half of the image. Halang island resides at the mouth of the river and Berkley Island, larger and nearer to a connected landmass is divided by a slight stream of the Rokan River. Bagan Si Api-api is the labeled built up human settlement at the far right edge of the image.