There are the good wildfires, and there are the bad. Unfortunately, the latter often overwhelm the beneficial ones. We’ll go on with stories from San Diego in a minute—it’s a long story of an actually short time—but here’s a word about the bright side first. Whoopi Goldberg had a thought that’s worth repeating: When you
That’s the claim, anyway, and most certainly, the images are astoundingly clear and detailed, if a bit oddly hued. The image, released by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) last week, was taken by the Elecktro-L weather satellite. The satellite is in geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles (36,000km) above the Indian Ocean and was
I love autumn (or fall if you are that way inclined) and I love getting to see images of it spreading across a country from above, like this image below which was taken on October 9, and shows the northeastern portion of North America.
NASA has released a series of video and still visualisations that show a decade’s worth of fires across the surface of Earth based on data gathered by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instruments on board NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.
The tropical tourist paradise of Thailand is currently suffering through enormously costly floods, resulting from a “weak” La Niña monsoon season. Following September’s extremely heavy rains — five feet of rain for the month — the monsoon season continues virtually unabated into this month, where it also coincided, last weekend, with the highest tides of the month. It is estimated that 10 % of the nation’s rice crop has been destroyed, so far, costing nearly 4 billion USD, and growing. This will have certain impact on global food prices (driving them higher) and on food security for tens of millions of people.
The Great Lakes – one of the most amazing geographic sites to see from space – is pictured below in what NASA describes as a ‘contradiction’ of colours.
Once again using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board their Aqua satellite, NASA have provided this stunning image of the Antarctic Peninsula.
For those of you not living in North America or are stereotypically American and aren’t aware of the world beyond your own three metre personal space, Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America, and can be seen beautifully surrounded by the beginnings of autumn colour.
Fires throughout the northeastern Australian state of Queensland have been captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board NASA’s Terra satellite this past Sunday, with several blazes clearly visible due to the smoke pouring into the atmosphere and being swept northeast.
The cloud that is seen streaking away from the Minnesota Fires in the image below is a ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ cloud, formed as a result of the fires beneath it.
This impressive shot from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite was captured on August 14, 2011 and shows a massive phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea, located north of Norway and Russia.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite captured this image of Franz Josef Land as the clouds parted on August 14.
NASA released this utterly breathtaking image of Earth as seen from space on October 17, 2000. You can clearly see North and South America thanks to the combined efforts two satellites.
One of the tallest and one of the most active volcanoes in the world, Mount Etnain in Sicily is erupting again, spewing lava and ash into the air.
This amazing mosaic of the Arctic near the north-pole in the summer was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra on June 30, 2011.
After 11 months since it calved off the northwestern coast of Greenland, this massive ice island is now wandering around off the coast of Labrador, Canada, caught int he ocean currents.
In early June the Chilean Volcano called Puyehue-Cordón Caulle erupted, sending a massive plume of ash around the Southern Hemisphere, stalling flights out of many airports and causing havoc for millions of passengers. NASA Satellite imagery captured the plume as it made its way around the world.
This image of the Juan Fernandez Islands was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 29, and shows the effect of two small islands on the atmosphere of Chile.
This image of the south of New Zealand’s North Island and the north of its South Island was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 29, 2011.
Below, are images from the eruption and of the ash plume that ended up disrupting air travel in Iceland, followed shortly by Greenland, Scotland, Norway, Svalbard and a small part of Denmark, Northern Ireland, northern England and Northern Germany.
This beautiful satellite image of Japan was taken by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the satellite Terra as it passed over Japan on May 20, 2011.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the over a hundred fires burning in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories in Canada on May 16, 2011.
Fires currently burning in theastern Georgia and eastern North Carolina were caught by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 9 at 18:35 UTC (2:35 p.m. EDT).
Massive rainfalls towards the end of April, 2011, have increased water levels along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, bringing them to record level highs. Flood waters have inundated homes, businesses and agricultural fields throughout the region.
April 27 and April 28 saw the deadliest outbreak of tornado’s strike the United States since 1974. By the end, at least 250 had been killed across 6 states, with Alabama being the hardest hit with 162 of the confirmed dead coming from that state.
The Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador was captured blanketed in ice and snow in this image captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on April the 9th.
This incredibly beautiful image of Egypt was taken using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on April 11, 2011, while the clouds were trundling across the Mediterranean Sea.
Since April 6, more than a million acres have burned throughout the state of the Texas, says the Texas Forest Service. This image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows conditions on April 15, 2011. Wind whips both smoke and dust southeast across the state. The fires that MODIS detected are marked in red.
The image below was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on April 8, 2011, and shows the dust which had hovered off the coast of Portugal two days earlier now moving toward the United Kingdom and Ireland.
NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite captured this beautiful image of New Zealand on March 30.
A massive plume of dust has swept off the Sahara desert in North Africa and in the image below hangs off the coast of Portugal in an image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on April 6, 2011.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite captured this true-color image on March 26 at 9:55 UTC of a massive dust storm as it ran across the Arabian Peninsula.
The Great Lakes are one of the planet’s most beautiful locations, almost moreso when seen from space. This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra on March 28.
Iceland is aptly named in this image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on March 9.
This beautiful yet still terrifying image of Tropical Cyclone Carlos, off the western coast of Australia, was taken by the The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite around 2:15 p.m. local time on February 24, 2011.
St. Patrick’s Day might have been last week, but it’s never too late to showcase some beautiful imagery taken of the Emerald Isle.
NASA has been providing a lot of photos and satellite imagery of Japan over the past week, focusing on the devastation that has affected the region surrounding the Sendai region after the magnitude-9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit. Below are three more images that each show a different picture of the impact the earthquake and tsunami had on the country.
2011 is the first year since NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, which launched on NASA’s Terra satellite in late 1999, has seen the tip of Hut Point Peninsula in McMurdo Sound, free of sea ice. The images below show the same location in 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2011.
In early March 2011, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured the progression of a large dust storm which traveled from Iraq to Iran and into the Persian Gulf. The top image was taken on March 3rd and shows the storm in its early stages as it gathered dust from points along the
