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Phytoplankton bloom

Phytoplankton bloom off western Iceland; 24 June, 2010. Taken by the Aqua satellite.

Phytoplankton bloom off western Iceland; 24 June, 2010. Taken by NASA's Aqua satellite.

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Image taken by the Aqua satellite, courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeff Schmaltz/the MODIS Land Rapid Response Team.

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'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 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.
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Earth from Mars
Earth from Mars
Vivid colors and bizarre shapes come together in this artistic, fantastical image, taken from space on June 15, 2005. The labyrinth of exotic features was spotted along the edge of Russia's Chaunskaya Bay (shown by the vivid blue half circle) in northeastern Siberia. Two major rivers, the Chaun and Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and bogs are present throughout the area, created by depressions left by receding glaciers.
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Vivid colors and bizarre sh...
Siberian ribbons
As part of the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), NASA scientists are flying over Alaska and Canada, measuring the elevation of rivers and lakes to study how thawing permafrost affects hydrology in the landscape.
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As part of the Arctic Borea...
Kuskokwim River
In this image, it’s hard to get a sense of scale or of what we’re actually looking at. This picture, taken by the Landsat-5 satellite on 8 April, 1985, shows sand dunes (yellow streaks) that extend from Algeria into Mauritania in northwest Africa. These wind-blown sand ridges make up Erg Iguidi, one of the Sahara’s ‘sand seas’ in which individual dunes are often more than a third of a mile (500 meters) wide and tall.
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Sea of Sand
Sea of sand
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
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.
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TIBETAN DEPTHS: Dagze Co (L...
Tibetan depths
The Sierra de Velasco Mountains dominate this image in northern Argentina. The Catamarca province is in the northern part of the image, and the La Rioja province is to the south. The streams are fed by runoff from the snow in the Andes Mountains to the north. These intermittent streams can dry up rapidly. The larger urban area near the bottom of the image is La Rioja, the capital of the province of La Rioja. This image was acquired by the Landsat 5 satellite on February 28, 1985.
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Argentina
Argentina
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.
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Night lights, big cities
Night lights, big cities
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
This view of Earth from space is a fusion of science and art, drawing on data from multiple satellite missions and the talents of NASA scientists and graphic artists.
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Twin Blue Marbles
Twin Blue Marbles
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
​ A spring phytoplankton bloom off of the Alaskan coast.
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Churning in the Chukchi Sea
Churning in the Chukchi Sea
This image, captured by the Landsat-8 satellite, shows the view over Western Australia on May 12, 2013. The image shows rich sediment and nutrient patterns in a tropical estuary area and complex patterns and conditions in vegetated areas.  The image is enhanced and involved masking, separately enhancing and then reassembling water and land portions of the image. The water patterns are the result of an RGB display of Landsat-8’s red, blue, and ultra-blue bands. Land is shown using short-wavelength-infrared, near-infrared and green. 
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Color Explosion
Color explosion
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.
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NIGHT LIGHTS: Earth's city ...
Night lights
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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MOON FRAME: Earth and its M...
Moon frame
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
Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the North Atlantic, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Blooms off Scandinavia seem to be particularly intense in summer 2018.
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A vortex of lighter green p...
Summer blooms in the Baltic
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
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.
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MEANDERING MISSISSIPPI: Sma...
Meandering Mississippi
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
This image, showing tidal flats and channels on Long Island, in the Bahamas, was taken by an Expedition 26 crew member onboard the International Space Station. The islands of the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea are situated on large platforms made mainly from carbonate sediments ringed by fringing reefs — the islands themselves are only the parts of the platform currently exposed above sea level. The sediments are formed mostly from the skeletal remains of organisms settling to the sea floor; over geologic time, these sediments will consolidate to form carbonate sedimentary rocks such as limestone. Darker blue shows deeper water, while light blue-green shows shallow water on the tidal flat. The continually exposed parts of the island are seen in brown, a result of soil formation and vegetation growth (left).
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This image, showing tidal f...
Long Island, Bahamas
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.
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FLOATING FREE: A space suit...
Floating free
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.
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ENDEAVOUR: Some of the most...
Endeavour
Byrd Glacier, Antarctica, is a 15-mile- (24-kilometer-) wide, 100-mile- (161-kilometer-) long ice stream that plunges through a deep valley in the Transatlantic Mountains and into the Ross Ice Shelf. It moves towards the sea at a rate of about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) per year. This snapshot of the glacier was taken on January 11, 2000.
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Byrd Glacier is a 15-mile- ...
Byrd Glacier

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