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The fields in this image are located southwest of the city of Perdizes, which means “partridges” in Portuguese. A mix of regularly-gridded polygonal fields and circular center-pivot fields marks the human use of the region. Small streams (and their adjacent floodplains) of the Araguari River extend like fingers throughout the landscape.
The visual diversity of the field forms is matched by the variety of crops: sunflowers, wheat, potatoes, coffee, rice, soybeans, and corn are among the products of the region. While the Northern Hemisphere is still in the grip of winter, crops are growing in the Southern Hemisphere, as indicated by the many green fields. Fallow fields—not in active agricultural use—display the violet, reddish, and light tan soils common to this part of Brazil. Darker soils are often rich in iron and aluminum oxides, and are typical of highly weathered soil that forms in hot, humid climates.
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Shadows accentuate several features of the Pico de Orizaba, a stratovolcano, visible in this astronaut photograph from the International Space Station. The 300-meter (1,000-foot)-deep summit crater is clearly visible against surrounding ice and snow cover near image center. Several lava flows extend down the flanks of the volcano, made readily visible by prominent cooling ridges along their sides known as flow levees. One of the most clearly visible examples is located on the southwest flank of the cone.
The extinct Sierra Negra volcano to the southwest has a summit elevation of 4,640 meters (15,225 feet) above sea level; while not as lofty as Pico de Orizaba, it is also one of Mexico’s highest peaks.
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Narrow cordons of coastal dunes stretch for hundreds of kilometers along this part of Argentina’s coast. The Médano Blanco is not far from the arid and windy borderlands with Patagonia—one of the windiest places on Earth.
The effects of strong westerly winds (blowing from bottom to top in this image) can be seen everywhere in this astronaut photograph. Dune-ridge crests are oriented at right angles to the prevailing wind. Geologists suspect that erosion by wind has excavated numerous hollows, which now dot the farmland as small shallow lakes. A stand of dark green trees has been planted on the upwind side of a health spa—the white dot is the roof of a stately building—as a protective barrier against the wind.
The white fringe along the seashore is formed by lines of breaking waves. Crossing swell trains appear offshore in the Atlantic, and the curvature of the swell shows the effect of the westerly wind. Winds tend to drive the sea currents in this area, though some prominent onshore swells also approach the coast from the southeast. The light brown tinted seawater near the shore is rich with fine mud that is stirred up out of coastal sediments by wave action, then washed seaward and east by currents.
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Large dark regions to the south (image left) contain mostly agricultural fields. To the north, numerous smaller cities are interspersed with agricultural fields, giving way to forested areas as one approaches the Italian Alps (not shown). Low, patchy clouds diffuse the city lights, producing isolated regions that appear blurred. The Milan urban area is located within the Po Valley, a large plain bordered by the Adriatic Sea to the east-southeast, the Italian Alps to the north, and the Ligurian Sea and Appenines Mountains to the south.
Milan has the largest metropolitan area in Italy, and the fifth largest in the European Union. It is one of Europe’s major transportation, industrial, and commercial hubs, and is also a global center of fashion and culture. It is considered an “alpha” world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.
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The March 11 earthquake caused severe damage to oil refineries, some of which caught fire. In the aftermath, oil floated on the surface of Ishinomaki Bay. In this photo, sunglint—the mirror-like reflection of the Sun on the ocean's surface—highlights the oil slicks; oil smoothes the surface and makes the water more reflective. In this image, patches of oil tend to appear lighter than oil-free areas. Other phenomena, however, can lighten the water’s appearance, especially close to the shore.
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This image is rotated slightly so north is to the upper right. The metropolitan area of Sendai appears in shades of beige and gray. The coastal plain east and south of the city appears dark due to flood waters sitting on normally dry land. Rivers meandering to the coast blend with the inundated lands now surrounding them.
This photo was taken from an altitude of 215 miles (345 kilometers). Compared to an astronaut photo acquired the previous day, this image appears to have been captured from a higher altitude, but the seeming difference is due to the camera lens.
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Mount Alvernia—the highest point in the Bahamas, with an elevation of approximately 63 meters (206 feet) above sea level—is located on the southeastern part of the island. Like most other islands in the Bahamas, Cat Island is located on a large depositional platform that is composed mainly of carbonate sediments and surrounding reefs. The approximately 77 kilometer-long island (48 miles) is the part of the platform continuously exposed above water, which allows for soil development (brown to tan areas) and the growth of vegetation.
Shallow water to the west-southwest (below the island in this view) appears bright blue, in contrast to the deeper ocean waters to the north, east, and south. In this astronaut photograph, the ocean surface near the southeastern half of the island has a slight grey tinge due to sunglint, or light reflecting off the water surface back towards the International Space Station. Small white cumulus clouds obscure some parts of the island.
Cat Island is inhabited, and had a total population of 1,647 in 2000, according to the Department of Statistics of the Bahamas. The smaller island of Little San Salvador to the west is privately owned and used as a port of call for cruise ships.
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Astronauts on the International Space Station snapped this digital photograph of Nabro in January 2011, when all was still quiet. The horseshoe-shaped caldera stretches 8 kilometers (5 miles) in diameter and opens to the southwest. Two smaller calderas lie within the larger one. Gullies and channels scar the outer flanks, signs of many years of runoff. The inner edge of the caldera has steep cliffs, some as high as 400 meters.
Located in Eritrea near the border with Ethiopia, Nabro is part of larger double-caldera structure with the Mallahle volcano to the southwest. Both volcanoes were built, like Kilimanjaro, from trachyte lavas, and later filled by eruptions of ignimbrite. Research suggests that both calderas may have formed around the same time. The volcanic range has been “virtually undocumented,” according to researchers.
As of June 18, 2011, the volcano was still erupting, though less effusively than during the preceding week. The ash cloud has periodically disrupted air traffic in North Africa and parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Ash plumes were reported as far as the Central African Republic, Israel, and Turkmenistan.
