Skip Navigation
menu close modal

Related

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.
More
GUINEA-BISSAU COAST: Guinea...
Guinea-Bissau coast
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.
More
Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
This stunning image of the northwest corner of Australia was snapped by a student on Earth after remotely controlling the Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station.
More
Northwest Australia from th...
Northwest Australia from the Space Station
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.
More
BLUE MARBLE: This spectacul...
Blue marble
​ A spring phytoplankton bloom off of the Alaskan coast.
More
Churning in the Chukchi Sea
Churning in the Chukchi Sea
The Republic of Maldives is a country located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India.
More
Republic of Maldives
Republic of Maldives
This image, taken on 10 May 2001, shows one of the islands of New Caledonia, an archipelago 1200 kilometers (750 miles) east of Australia. New Caledonia contains the world’s third-largest coral reef structure, and its coral reefs support an unusually large diversity of species, including many predators, big fish, turtles, and the world’s third-largest dugong population. (Dugongs are large marine mammals.) In this natural-color image, the islands appear in shades of green and brown — mixtures of vegetation and bare ground. The surrounding waters range from pale aquamarine to deep blue, and the color differences reflect varying water depths. Over coral reef ridges and sand bars, the water is shallowest and palest in color.
More
Blue Lagoon
Blue lagoon
Dagze Co (Lake) is one of many inland lakes in Tibet. In glacial times, the region was considerably wetter, and lakes were correspondingly much larger. This is evident by the numerous fossil shorelines that circle the lake, and attest to the presence of a larger, deeper lake. Changes in climate have resulted in greater aridity of the Tibetan Plateau, and drying up of the lakes. Image taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on October 8, 2001.
More
TIBETAN DEPTHS: Dagze Co (L...
Tibetan depths
Curling snow drifts are magnified by the terrain around the 1,400 mile Dnieper (Dnipro) River, flowing from Russia to the Black Sea.
More
The wild, frozen Dnieper (D...
The wild, frozen Dnieper (Dnipro) River
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.
More
TO BOLDLY GO: February 12, ...
To boldly go
The Caicos Islands in the northern Caribbean are a popular tourist attraction, renowned for their beautiful beaches, clear waters, scuba diving, and luxury resorts. The islands lie primarily along the northern perimeter of the submerged Caicos Bank (turquoise), a shallow limestone platform formed of sand, algae, and coral reefs covering 2,370 square miles (6,140 square kilometers). Image taken by Landsat 7 on April 24, 2003.
More
CARIBBEAN LUXURY: The Caico...
Caribbean luxury
This image, taken in February 1984, shows the confluence of the Parana and Paraguay Rivers northeast of the town of Corrientes, in Argentina. The Parana is South America's second largest river (the Amazon being the largest), and the river and its tributaries are important transportation routes for landlocked cities in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. Both the Parana and Paraguay Rivers are loaded with sediment; the Paraguay (left) contains a tan sediment and the Parana (right) contains a reddish-brown muddy sediment. As the two rivers merge in the center of the photo and begin to flow southwest, we see how their sediments remain fairly unmixed for many miles downstream. Original high-resolution image here.
More
This image, taken in Februa...
Paraná River, Argentina and Paraguay
Parts of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea as seen from the International Space Station 220 miles above Earth, from the Cupola window. The image was taken on November 9, 2010 by one of the Expedition-25 crew members using a 16-millimeter f/2.8D lens, which gives the image a fish-eye effect.
More
WINDOW TO THE WORLD: Parts ...
Window to the world
Susitna Glacier, Alaska. Like rivers of liquid water, glaciers flow downhill, with tributaries joining to form larger rivers. But where water rushes, ice crawls. As a result, glaciers gather dust and dirt, and bear long-lasting evidence of past movements. Alaska’s Susitna Glacier reveals some of its long, grinding journey in this image, taken from space on August 27, 2009. The satellite image combines infrared, red and green wavelengths to form a false-color picture. Vegetation is red and the glacier’s surface is marbled with dirt-free blue ice and dirt-coated brown ice. Infusions of relatively clean ice push in from tributaries in the north. The glacier surface appears especially complicated near the center of the image, where a tributary has pushed the ice in the main glacier slightly southward. In the lower left corner of this image, meltwater lakes can be seen on top of the ice.
More
Like rivers of liquid water...
Susitna Glacier
This simulated natural-color image shows the North and South Malosmadulu Atolls in the Maldives, an island republic in the northern Indian Ocean, southwest of India. The Maldives consists of a chain of almost 1200 small coral islands that are grouped into clusters of atolls. It is home to about a third of a million people. Arguably the lowest-lying country in the world, the average elevation is 1 meter (3.3 feet) above sea level. Waves triggered by the great tsunami of December 2004 spilled over sea walls to flood the capital with sandy water and then swept out just as suddenly. Residents fear this was a foreboding of disasters to come from sea level rise due to global warming. The image was taken on 22 December 2002, and covers an area of 51 x 90 kilometers (32 x 56 miles).
More
The Maldives
The Maldives
This map shows the bright lights of cities and wildfires set against the inky black backdrop of night. The image is actually a composite of satellite data collected over a number of days in April 2012 and October 2012, and is the result of 312 orbits and 2.5 TB of information. The lights seen here are not just from cities; they are also from wildifires, lightning, gas flares and reflected moonlight. Because the image is a composite of several days’ worth of data, fires and other points of light may have been picked up by the satellite and integrated into the composite image even though they were temporary, making some rural locations (such as in Australia) seem brighter than they really are on a typical day.
More
Night lights, big cities
Night lights, big cities
Small, blocky shapes of towns, fields, and pastures surround the graceful swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River. Countless oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the meandering river south of Memphis, Tennessee, on the border between Arkansas and Mississippi, USA. The 'mighty Mississippi' is the largest river system in North America. Image taken by Landsat 7 on May 28, 2003.
More
MEANDERING MISSISSIPPI: Sma...
Meandering Mississippi
A space suit floats freely away from the International Space Station in a scene reminiscent of a sci-fi movie. But this time, no investigation is needed. The suit is actually the world's latest satellite and was launched on February 3, 2006. Dubbed SuitSat-1, the unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit filled mostly with old clothes was fitted with a radio transmitter and released to orbit the Earth.
More
FLOATING FREE: A space suit...
Floating free
NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured water mixing between Georgia's ick-colored Suwannee River and the deep blue Gulf of Mexico.
More
Suwannee blackwater river m...
Suwannee blackwater river meets the sea
Earth's city lights as seen from space. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. More than a century after the invention of the electric light, many parts of the planet remain thinly populated and unlit. Image created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System.
More
NIGHT LIGHTS: Earth's city ...
Night lights
This stunning image, taken on July 27, 2000, shows the Lena River in Russia, one of the largest rivers in the world, which is some 2,800 miles (4,400 kilometers) long. The Lena Delta Reserve is the most extensive protected wilderness area in Russia. It is animportant refuge and breeding ground for many species of Siberian wildlife. Original high-resolution image here.
More
This stunning image, taken ...
Lena Delta, Russia
Some of the most breathtaking views of Earth taken from space are those that capture our planet's limb. When viewed from the side, the Earth looks like a flat circle, and the atmosphere appears like a halo around it. This edge of the atmosphere is known as the limb. Viewed from space, the image of this luminous envelope of gases shielding life on our planet from the dark, cold space beyond rarely fails to fascinate us. What makes this image even more fascinating is the added silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour. The orange layer seen is the troposphere, where all of the weather and clouds that we typically experience are created and contained. The troposphere gives way to the whitish stratosphere and then mesosphere. This image was captured by an astronaut prior to Endeavour's rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station on February 9, 2010.
More
ENDEAVOUR: Some of the most...
Endeavour
The history of sea islands in the Altamaha River delta on the coast of Georgia can be seen in this image. The outlines of long-lost plantation rice fields, canals, dikes and other inlets are clearly defined. Salt marshes are shown in red, while dense cypress and live oak tree canopies are seen in yellow-greens. Image taken by the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) on March 9, 2001.
More
GEORGIA PATCHWORK: The hist...
Georgia patchwork
This photo from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the Earth as seen from the surface of Mars, shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky. Earth is the bright point of light a little left of the image’s center and our moon can be seen just below Earth. Curiosity, which landed on the red planet on August 6, 2013, is the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to Mars. It studies the geology of its surroundings and has found evidence of a past environment well-suited to support microbial life. Researchers used the left-eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (January 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove cosmic-ray effects. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct bright evening ‘stars’. When Curiosity took the photo, Earth was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers) from Mars. This picture adds to our collection of photos of planet Earth from afar, giving a unique perspective to our place in the cosmos.
More
Earth from Mars
Earth from Mars
The sun sets over NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on October 13, 2010.
More
Vivid Sunset
Vivid sunset

Explore

Interactives, galleries and apps

Images of Change

Images of Change

Explore a stunning gallery of before-and-after images of Earth from land and space that reveal our home planet in a state of flux.
More
Climate Time Machine

Climate Time Machine

Travel through Earth's recent climate history and see how increasing carbon dioxide, global temperature and sea ice have changed over time.
More
Eyes on the Earth

Eyes on the Earth

Track Earth's vital signs from space and fly along with NASA's Earth-observing satellites in an interactive 3D visualization.
More
Global Ice Viewer

Global Ice Viewer

Earth's ice cover is shrinking. See how climate change has affected glaciers, sea ice, and continental ice sheets.
More