In the midst of its third field campaign in Antarctica, NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission has provided the first ever detailed airborne measurements of the process of a massive iceberg calving from its parent glacier. Pine Island Glacier has not calved such a significant iceberg since 2001, and many scientists had suspected that it was now
Though looking at Ireland from space is always stunning, with it’s masses of dark green spread across the vast majority of the island, in this image there is something even more spectacular; the electric blue plankton bloom to the south. Captured by the European Space Agency’s Envisat satellite on 23 May, 2010, using the Medium
The world’s fourth largest island and the subject of quite a funny animated film, Madagascar is caught on camera by the European Space Agency’s satellite Envisat on 30 June, 2009. The image was caught using the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument and shows very clearly the beautiful green and browns of the island. Source:
The Aegean and Libyan Seas in the eastern Mediterranean are split by the island of Crete, which is seen in prominence in this Envisat image.
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.
For many of us, we’re never going to see an aurora. We simply live too far away from the poles. We might be able to make do with photos people have taken from the ground, but even that doesn’t match up with the video and image below, which show the aurora australis over Antarctica on September 11, 2005.
The black spots below are not problems with the photography, but rather lakes in what is normally the arid Gobi Desert in the Chinese Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia.
Scientists working with NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne research campaign started their third year of survey flights and captured this image of the sea ice covering the Weddell Sea.
Captured on the 8th of September by the European Space Agency’s Envisat Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) are the Canary Islands, at the bottom of this image, off the west coast of Africa.
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.
In this stunning black and white image taken by the European Space Agency’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) on board Envisat, we get to see Spitsbergen, Norway’s largest island.
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 European Space Agency ERS satellites have provided the data to create this amazing image of the varied elevations in the Bachu region of western China.
In September 2010 Cape Farewell began its 9th Art & Science expedition to the Arctic. For 22 days the crew of 20 voyagers sailed around Svalbard and Spitsbergen on the Noorderlicht(an 100 year old ship), sailing north of the 80th parallel to the ice edge from Spitsbergen and east towards Russia.
Many of us will never see an aurora with our own eyes, so we resort to videos and images on the internet. One of the most amazing I’ve ever seen is this series of still images collated into a timelapse video taken from the International Space Station on September 17.
Taken by a member of the ICESCAPE mission on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy as it steamed its way south in the Arctic Ocean towards the edge of the sea ice on July 20.
Everyone has heard about the beautifully romantic city that is Venice, and sometimes we even get to see inside the city thanks to movies like The Italian Job and Casino Royale. However this beautiful image taken by Ikonos-2, a commercial satellite that provides panchromatic and multispectral high-resolution imagery for the European Space Agency shows us another, but just as spectacular view of the city.
As reported yesterday the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the Arctic sea ice minimum extent would come in as second lowest since recording began back in 1979. Now, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has provided their own series of images and videos to back up that report, showing the extent of Arctic sea ice for September 9, 2011.
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.
Deep in the heart of Australia’s outback rests a massive rock. Known for a long time as Ayers Rock, but known for an even longer time as Uluru, the sandstone formation stands 348 m (1,142 ft) high, though most of its bulk lies underground.
Artist John Quigley has travelled to the Arctic sea ice and drawn Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous sketch the ‘Vitruvian Man’ onto the Arctic Ice as a way to show what humans have done to the planet.
This stunningly beautiful HDR image of the remnants of Hurricane Irene was taken in New York by Jose Sepulveda.
NASA Satellites have been watching Hurricane Irene for several days and providing the public with images of its progress.
I think that there is probably nothing as beautiful as a full disc image of Earth, though I would like it if I could find one that didn’t focus on the Americas. Either way, this most recent image was taken on August 24, 2011, by the NASA/NOAA GOES-13 satellite.
The Thematic Mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite captured this natural-color image on June 15, 2009 of Omulyakhskaya and Khromskaya Bays which lie along the northern Siberian coast, southeast of the Lyakhov Islands while the ice still lingered on the sea surface and on some inland water bodies.
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.
This beautiful image shows southern Namibia and northern South Africa on Africa’s lower-west coast thanks to the European Space Agency’s Envisat satellite.
Ran across this today an love it. Thought I’d share:
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.
Smoke from the Lateral West Fire burning in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (GDSBWR) in southeastern Virginia was caught by the GOES-13 satellite streaming out to the east.
The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami left devastation along the Japanese coast line that is still being felt to this day. But the resultant tsunami also caused havoc in Antarctica, breaking off several large icebergs from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf.
Webster’s Dictionary defines mindfulness as “the trait of staying aware (paying close attention to) your responsibilities and/or being present in the moment.” When traveling, I strive for a mindful experience, meaning I am present and fully take in my experiences in the moment and try to stay aware of the impact of my travel experience.
Travel, which requires the use of transportation, is by its very nature not a “green” activity, but it can be a mindful journey.
Captured on June 27 of this year by the crew on the International Space Station, this photo of the Massachusetts coastline was taken at an angle, allowing for the sunglint shown prominently in Cape Cod Bay.
In Russia’s far east is the Kamchatka Peninsula, which drops down between the Pacific Ocean on its east and the Sea of Okhotsk on its west side. Show central in this image is an isolated volcanic group that includes the most active volcano in Eurasia; Klyuchevskaya Sopka.
This is a beautiful music video a friend on Google Reader recently shared with me. It includes some of the most beautiful photos of natural landscapes I’ve seen. And the music is beautiful as well. And they are nicely synced.
Here’s more from the YouTube page (and credits at the end as well): “Tribute video for our planet Earth. Name of used song is Melanesian Choirs: Jisas yu holem hand blong mi.”
Enjoy!
A beautiful image taken in White River, Mpumalanga, South Africa, that I found while trundling through Flickr.
The Petermann Ice Island-A (PII-A) iceberg can be seen in this July 20th image floating off the coast of Newfoundland, almost a year after it calved off the Petermann Glacier on the northwest coast of Greenland.
The long strain of the Andes dominates this image of South America, still snow-capped and including the Northern Patagonian Ice Field in southern Chile to the bottom left of the image.
NASA’s GOES013 satellite captured this image July 22 at 0845 UTC (4:45 a.m. EDT) of three separate tropical cyclones; Bret and Cindy trundling through the North Atlantic in the right of the image, and Hurricane Dora over in the eastern Pacific.
By this time of year, the snow on the Uinta Mountains in Utah have normally given way to grass and wildflowers, but not this year, as is shown in the image below which was taken by the Landsat 5 satellite on July 15.
This astronaut photograph shows the Shoemakr (formerly Teague) Impact Structure in Western Australia, a massive impact site approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) in diameter and easily discernible from the surrounding landscape by concentric ring structures.
The Painted Desert in northern Arizona, US, lies between the Grand Canyon and northwest of the Petrified Forest National Park, and is captured here in two beautiful images taken by the Thematic Mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite.
Japan’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS) captured this image of Tanzania’s Lake Sulunga on 25 June, 2009, with its AVNIR-2 Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer.
Researchers on the NASA-funded ICESCAPE mission—Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment—have been examining melt ponds and the ice around them as seen in the image below.
