Images

A volcanic landscape in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad shows some mysterious shapes. However, science can explain mysteries in satellite images. The octopus-shaped feature consists of ancient volcanic flows. In the crater below it, what looks like a face is bright salt deposits.

If you like being connected to the world everywhere you go with a smartphone or other device, then you have a desolate salt flat in northern Chile to thank.

A massive iceberg broke off Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, in September 2017. Instead of drifting out to sea after calving, sea ice impeded the iceberg’s movement, and it cracked up into countless pieces nearly on the spot. Even though it broke up relatively quickly for an iceberg, it is more of a slow-motion shattering.

This image of the Ross Archipelago near the McMurdo Station in Antarctica was acquired January 1, 2018, by Landsat 8, almost exactly a decade after USGS and NASA officials signed off on a Landsat Data Distribution Policy that made Landsat images free to the public.

In 1934, the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire’s White Mountains experienced a wind gust of 231 miles per hour, the highest surface wind speed ever recorded. 

Capital Concord

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 1,377,529

South Dakota is home to the fabled “Black Hills.” Seen from a distance, these pine-covered hills, rising several thousand feet above the surrounding prairie, appear black.

Capital Pierre

Image Source Landsat 8

Population 886,667

A large outbreak of gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) caterpillars attacked the hardwood forests of the northeastern United States in 2016. A fungus (Entomophaga maimaigaM) introduced from Japan has kept gypsy moth populations at relatively low levels since the late 1980s.

Example of lidar-derived metric products of canopy structure. A) Image showing an area characterized by varied forest strands.  (Red box shows from where profile data in E area taken.) B) Lidar-derived maximum canopy height.  C) Lidar-derived height of low- to medium-height vegetation beneath the overstory canopy.

A profile view from the normalized point cloud in Superior National Forest, notice the flattened ground surface.  Points are colored by elevation.

In the Landsat 8 image acquired on December 9, smoke is carried west by strong winds, which also continued to spread fire through the dry terrain, mountain passes, and canyons. The diagonal lines are an airplane contrail and its shadow cast on the ground.

Green shades seem to be bubbling up like a lava lamp on the left side of this image from northeastern Kenya. The right side is like rusted metal. The dark green is the result of geologically recent lava flows, and the other colors are different types of soils. Even with few defined shapes, the piece has a strange beauty.

Soft colors contrast with harsh terrain in southwestern Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen. Calming blues and purples seem to collide with an angry orange in this rich tapestry of colors, which are the result of the region’s complex geology. The wild shapes in this busy landscape lie in a region known as the Asharah fault zone.

Fluorescent colors dominate this dreamlike scene. The orange shapes look like glowfish in a fanciful underwater world. Those glowfish are actually clouds, and the neon green represents mountains, including Mount Rainier, near Seattle, Washington.

In a remote part of the Western Desert in central Egypt, highly eroded plateaus rise from the desert floor. The bright speckles are ancient dry lakes, the salt deposits reflecting brightly. Long ago, water flowed off the plateau, forming the breaches seen on the plateaus’ edges. This desolate land between oases is surrounded by extensive sand dunes.

These orange shades and ragged shapes give an impression of moodiness. The jagged scars are extensive valleys carved by water flowing from the Andes Mountains in northern Chile. The crater in the lower right is the volcano Cerro Guachiscota.

The northern end of Isla Isabela in the Galapagos looks like a seahorse with warts—with an eye painted in the ancient Egyptian style. The island was formed by the merger of six volcanoes. Wolf Volcano is the prominent one in the center; Ecuador Volcano is the one that forms the seahorse’s mouth. Past volcanic flows radiate from the large craters.

As Hurricane Sandy made landfall on October 29, 2012, the storm’s waves and wind cut a breach in a narrow part of Fire Island, a barrier island south of Long Island, New York.

Residents had little warning when wildfires that ignited late Sunday night, October 8, 2017, were fanned by wind gusts of 50 miles per hour and blasted across California's wine country. More than 100,000 acres have burned as of October 11, with less than 6 percent of the fires contained.

This Landsat image looks like a bold watercolor. Yellow dances across the darkness with muted violet underneath. With a kind of science-fiction flair, this scene shows a portion of the Qattara Depression in Egypt.

A screenshot of the phenocam at the U.S.

Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica has snapped off its share of icebergs in recent years. The frequency of noteworthy breaks is evidence that the ice shelf is becoming increasingly fragile. The latest iceberg cracked off the end of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf around September 23, 2017.