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Moon frame

MOON FRAME: Earth and its Moon are nicely framed in this image taken from the aft windows of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. Discovery, on mission STS-95, was flying over the Atlantic Ocean at the time this image was taken.

Earth and its Moon are nicely framed in this image taken from the aft windows of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. Discovery, on mission STS-95, was flying over the Atlantic Ocean at the time this image was taken.

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Image and caption courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo and Video photostream. Credit: NASA.

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The United States' first spacewalk, made by Ed White on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission. On the third orbit, White opened his hatch and used a hand-held manuevering oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule. After the first three minutes the fuel ran out and White manuevered by twisting his body and pulling on the tether. His extra-vehicular activity started over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and lasted 23 minutes, ending over the Gulf of Mexico. The photograph was taken by commander James McDivitt.
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The United States' first sp...
Space odyssey
This beautiful image, taken on 11 January 2001, shows a geological formation in the Maur Adrar Desert in Mauritania, Africa. Known as the "Richat Structure," this snail-shell-like formation was created when a volcanic dome hardened and gradually eroded, exposing onion-like layers of rock.
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Geologic Delight
Geologic delight
This photo, taken on January 22, 2001 by the Landsat-7 satellite, shows Akpatok Island, which lies in Ungava Bay in Canada. Accessible only by air, Akpatok Island rises out of the water as sheer cliffs that soar 500 to 800 feet (150 to 243 meters) above the sea surface. The island is an important sanctuary for cliff-nesting seabirds. Numerous ice floes around the island attract walruses and whales, making Akpatok a traditional hunting ground for native Inuit people.
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Akpatok Island
Akpatok Island
This false-color image shows snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalayas between major rivers in southwest China. The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together stretch for more than 1800 miles (2,900 kilometers). This particular image was taken by NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), flying aboard the Terra satellite, on February 27, 2002. The picture is a composite made by combining near-infrared, red and green wavelengths.
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Himalayas
The Himalayas
This image, taken on January 21, 2005, shows a collision between two of the largest floating objects in the world, the Drygalski Ice Tongue and iceberg "B15-A" in Antarctica (B15-A is on the right). The 43-mile- (70-kilometer-) long Drygalski Ice Tongue juts out from the icy land of Antarctica into McMurdo Sound like a pier, and is a floating extension of the land-based David Glacier. B15-A, 75 miles (120 kilometers) long, had been drifting slowly towards Drygalski for months before this image was taken. The presence of B15-A complicated supply trips to the nearby McMurdo science base and endangered penguins in the area by blocking their access to open sea. The perspective we get from space allows us to see the scale and scope of changes to these massive bodies of ice that we could not see in any other way.
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Drygalski Ice Tongue, Antar...
Drygalski Ice Tongue, Antarctica
Along Greenland's western coast, a small field of glaciers surrounds Baffin Bay. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on September 3, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using near-infrared, red and blue wavelengths. 
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Baffin Bay, Greenland
Baffin Bay, Greenland
Guinea-Bissau is a small country in West Africa. Complex patterns can be seen in the shallow waters along its coastline, where silt carried by the Geba and other rivers washes out into the Atlantic Ocean. Image taken by Landsat 7 on December 1, 2000.
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GUINEA-BISSAU COAST: Guinea...
Guinea-Bissau coast
This interesting image shows the world’s largest glacier, Lambert Glacier in Antarctica, and icefall that flows into it. Ice flows like water, albeit much more slowly. Cracks can be seen in this icefall as it bends and twists on its slow descent 1300 feet (400 meters) to the glacier below. The image was taken by the Landsat-7 satellite on December 2, 2000 and is a false-color composite made from infrared, red and green wavelengths. The image has also been sharpened using the sensor’s panchromatic band.
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Icefall
Icefall
This spectacular 'blue marble' image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (0.4 square miles) of our planet. Much of the information contained in this image came from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra satellite. Visualization date: August 2, 2002.
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BLUE MARBLE: This spectacul...
Blue marble
This image, taken on 4 July 2002, shows spiraling eddies known as von Karman vortices over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Such eddies form as air flows over and around objects in its path. In this case, these eddies were created when prevailing winds sweeping east across the northern Pacific Ocean encountered Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
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Extraordinary Eddies
Extraordinary eddies
These night-shining clouds were spotted over Billund, Denmark on July 15, 2010. These rare clouds are technically called "noctilucent" or "polar mesospheric" clouds, and form at high altitudes, 80 to 85 kilometers (50 to 53 miles) high, where the mesosphere is located. The clouds' high position in the atmosphere allows them to reflect sunlight long after the sun has dropped below the horizon. They only form when the temperature drops below –130 degrees Celsius (-200 degrees Fahrenheit), whereupon the scant amount of water high in the atmosphere freezes into ice clouds. This happens most often in countries at high northern and southern latitudes (above 50 degrees) in the summer, when the mesosphere is coldest. Studies suggest that night-shining clouds are becoming brighter and more common, which is linked to the mesosphere getting colder and more humid. These changes may be happening because of increased levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. In the mesosphere, carbon dioxide radiates heat into space, causing cooling. More methane, on the other hand, puts more water vapor into the atmosphere, because sunlight breaks methane up into water molecules at high altitudes. Research is ongoing.
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Nocturnal Wonders
Nocturnal wonders
'Ship tracks' above the northern Pacific Ocean. These patterns are produced when fine particles from ship exhaust float into a moist layer of atmosphere. The particles seed new clouds or attract water from existing cloud particles. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on July 3, 2010.
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SHIP TRACKS: 'Ship tracks' ...
Ship tracks
This beautiful aerial photograph shows a multi-layered lenticular cloud hovering near Mount Discovery in Antarctica, a volcano about 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of McMurdo.
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Antarctic Wonders
Antarctic wonders
February 12, 1984: Mission specialist Bruce McCandless II ventures further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut has ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger's payload bay, McCandless went 'free-flying' to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.
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TO BOLDLY GO: February 12, ...
To boldly go
A changing landscape in the heart of Madagascar, showing drainage into the sea in the Betsiboka Estuary due to decimation of rainforests and coastal mangroves. 
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The heart of Madagascar
The heart of Madagascar
NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured water mixing between Georgia's ick-colored Suwannee River and the deep blue Gulf of Mexico.
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Suwannee blackwater river m...
Suwannee blackwater river meets the sea
Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift through graceful swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin in the Canadian Arctic.
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Ice Stars
Ice Stars
Perhaps the most impressive of cloud formations, cumulonimbus (from the Latin for “pile” and “rain cloud”) clouds form due to vigorous convection (rising and overturning) of warm, moist and unstable air. Surface air is warmed by the sun-heated ground surface and rises; if sufficient atmospheric moisture is present, water droplets will condense as the air mass encounters cooler air at higher altitudes. The air mass itself also expands and cools as it rises due to decreasing atmospheric pressure, a process known as adiabatic cooling. This type of convection is common in tropical latitudes year-round and during the summer season at higher latitudes. As water in the rising air mass condenses and changes from a gas to a liquid state, it releases energy to its surroundings, further heating the surrounding air and leading to more convection and rising of the cloud mass to higher altitudes. This leads to the characteristic vertical “towers” associated with cumulonimbus clouds, an excellent example of which is visible in this astronaut photograph. If enough moisture is present to condense and heat the cloud mass through several convective cycles, a tower can rise to altitudes of approximately 10 kilometers at high latitudes and to 20 kilometers in the tropics before encountering a region of the atmosphere known as the tropopause—the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. The tropopause is characterized by a strong temperature inversion. Beyond the tropopause, the air no longer gets colder as altitude increases. The tropopause halts further upward motion of the cloud mass. The cloud tops flatten and spread into an anvil shape, as illustrated by this astronaut photograph. The photo was taken from a viewpoint that was at an angle from the vertical, rather than looking straight down towards the Earth’s surface. The image, taken while the International Space Station was located over western Africa near the Senegal-Mali border, shows a fully formed anvil cloud with numerous smaller cumulonimbus towers rising near it. The high energy levels of these storm systems typically make them hazardous due to associated heavy precipitation, lightning, high wind speeds and possible tornadoes.
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Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
Bombetoka Bay in northwestern Madagascar is an inlet of Mozambique Channel, and is at the mouth of the Betsiboka River. Just downstream is the second largest port of Madagascar, the town of Mahajanga, a road terminus and trade center that exports sugar, coffee, spices, cassava, vegetable oils, timber and vanilla. The surrounding area abounds in extensive coffee plantations. Simulated natural color image taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on August 23, 2000.
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BOMBETOKA BAY: Bombetoka Ba...
Bombetoka Bay
On the edge of the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, sand dunes are encroaching onto once-fertile lands in the north. Healthy vegetation appears red in this image; in the center, notice the lone red dot. It is the result of a center-pivot irrigation system, evidence that at least one optimistic farmer continues to work the fields despite the approaching sand. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on August 14, 2000. This is a false-color composite image made using near infrared, red and green wavelengths. The image has also been sharpened using the sensor's panchromatic band.
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"The Optimist," Kalahari De...
'The Optimist,' Kalahari Desert, Namibia
The Mackenzie River in Canada plays a major role in Arctic climate as warmer fresh water mixes with cold seawater.  This image was taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite on July 18, 2017.
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The Mackenzie River in Cana...
Mackenzie River
In this image, we see blue silt off the southern coast of Louisiana as the Mississippi River flows off into the Gulf of Mexico. The brightness and shade of blue depends on the density of the silt and the depth of the silt-carrying currents in the water. The small bright dots in the scene are fishing boats and oil platforms.
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In this image, we see blue ...
Louisiana silt
These are the Anti-Atlas Mountains, part of the Atlas Mountain range in southern Morocco, Africa. The region contains some of the world’s largest and most diverse mineral resources, most of which are still untouched. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on June 22, 2001. This is a false-color composite image made using shortwave infrared, infrared and red wavelengths.
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Atlas Mountains
Atlas Mountains
The first television picture of Earth from space. Image taken by TIROS 1 on April 1, 1960.
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TV DEBUT: The first televis...
TV debut
These cloud formations were seen over the western Aleutian Islands. Their color variations are probably due to differences in temperature and in the size of water droplets that make up the clouds. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on June 16, 2000.
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Aleutian clouds
Aleutian clouds

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