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While the bulk of the continent of Antarctica sits over the South Pole, the narrow Antarctic Peninsula extends like a finger towards the tip of South America. The northernmost part of the Peninsula is known as Graham Land, a small portion of which (located at approximately 64 degrees South latitude) is visible at the top left in this astronaut photograph.
Off the coast of Graham Land to the north-northwest, two of the South Shetland Islands—Livingston Island and Deception Island—are visible. Both have volcanic origins, and active volcanism at Deception Island has been recorded since 1800. (The last verified eruptive activity occurred in 1970.) Closer to the coastline of Graham Land, Brabant Island (not part of the South Shetlands) also includes numerous outcrops of volcanic rock, attesting to the complex tectonic history of the region.
The ISS was located over the South Atlantic Ocean, approximately 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) to the northeast when this image was taken. This long viewing distance, combined with the highly oblique angle, accentuates the shadowing of the ground and provides a sense of the topography similar to the view you get from an airplane. It also causes foreshortening of features in the image, making them appear closer to each other than they actually are. For example, the distance between Livingston and Deception Islands is approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles).
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Further out into the lake, dark brown depositional bars are visible, forming a rough arc marking the edge of the delta. Snow cover on the river floodplain highlights numerous secondary channels, as well as channels previously occupied by the river but now abandoned. The snow cover also traces the outlines of agricultural fields to the southwest and northeast.
Lake Baikal is a World Heritage Site. The Selenga River is the major contributor of water to Lake Baikal, occupying approximately 82 percent of the watershed area. The wetlands of the Selenga River delta are designated as a RAMSAR site and provide valuable habitat for more than 170 species of birds, including many migrating species. Like Baikal, the Selenga Delta is home to unique ecosystems, including more than 70 rare or endangered species of plants and animals.
Waters of the Selenga River serve many differing uses in both Mongolia and Russia, including agriculture, drinking water, light industry, mining, recreation, and tourism. These uses also contribute to the degradation of water quality, to downstream availability of water, and to ecological impacts. For example, a pulp and paper plant in the city of Selenginsk (lower left) has been tied to high levels of pollution in the river. International efforts to integrate management of the Selenga River basin for ecological and economic sustainability are ongoing.
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The different colors of the land surface are the result of trampling by humans and their livestock. Trampling disturbs the dark-colored soil crusts on the Egyptian side of the border, allowing lighter-colored dune sand beneath the crusts to be exposed by winds. A road also follows the border, making the demarcation more prominent. A patch of the Gaza Strip appears under scattered clouds at extreme image left.
In the arid to semiarid climate of the region, the natural vegetation is mostly sparse shrubs. Irrigated commercial agriculture in Israel appears as a series of large angular patterns and circular center pivot fields, with darker greens indicating growing crops (image left). Smaller plots appear on the Egyptian side of the border at image lower left.
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This astronaut photograph highlights the reentry plasma trail of one such spacecraft, the ISS Progress 42P supply vehicle (Russian designation M-10M). The Progress is based on the Soyuz design, and can fly autonomously or under remote control from the space station. Progress 42P docked at the ISS on April 29, 2011, and was undocked and de-orbited on October 29, 2011. Astronauts on the ISS took a time-lapse sequence of the event; the image above is part of that sequence.
The ISS was located over the southern Pacific Ocean when this image was taken. Light from the rising sun illuminates the curvature of the Earth limb (horizon line) at image top, but does not completely overwhelm the airglow visible at image top left. Airglow is the emission of light by atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere when they are excited by ultraviolet radiation.
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Rowley Shoals is located off the northwestern Australia coastline, approximately 300 kilometers (185 miles) west of the city of Broome. Since the late 1970s, fishing and diving expeditions have frequented the atolls. Clerke and Imperieuse Reefs are part of the Rowley Shoals Marine Park, established in 1990. Mermaid Reef is managed as the Mermaid Reef Marine National Nature Reserve, established in 1991.
The biodiversity of the atolls is impressive, with 233 coral species and 688 fish species more typical of Southeast Asia than other Western Australian reef ecosystems. Species include staghorn coral, giant clams, giant potato cod, maori wrasse, mackerel, and tuna. In addition, Bedwell Island (a cay in Clerke Reef) hosts a colony of red-tailed tropicbirds, as well as species of shearwaters, sea eagles, terns, plovers, and egrets.
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The shadowed areas bounding the rays are formed by clouds or mountain tops that block the path of sunlight or moonlight. However, obstructions alone are not sufficient to create crepuscular rays. The light also must be scattered by airborne dust, aerosols, water droplets, or molecules of air, providing a visible contrast between shadowed and illuminated parts of the sky.
When observed from the ground, crepuscular rays appear to radiate outwards from the source of light due to the effects of distance and perspective. However, the rays are actually parallel. This astronaut photograph from the International Space Station provides an unusual viewing perspective from above the rays and a clear illustration of their parallel nature. The sun was setting to the west (image left) on the Indian subcontinent, and cumulonimbus cloud towers provided the shadowing obstructions. The rays are being projected onto a layer of haze below the clouds.
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The artificial light from human settlements appears with a characteristic yellow tinge. The green light of the aurora borealis also shines brightly in this view—even seeming to reflect off Earth’s surface in Canada. A small white patch of light is almost certainly lightning from a storm on the East coast (image top right). Part of the ISS appears across the top of the image.
This astronaut photograph highlights the Chicago metropolitan area as the largest cluster of lights, next to the dark patch of Lake Michigan. The other largest metropolitan areas include St. Louis, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and the Omaha–Council Bluffs region on the Nebraska–Iowa border. The northeastern seaboard lies just beyond the Appalachian Mountains, a dark winding zone without major cities.
City light clusters give an immediate sense of relative city size. Demographers have used nighttime satellite imagery to make estimates of city populations, especially in the developing world, where growth can be rapid.
The sense of scale changes significantly in oblique views. Des Moines is 200 kilometers from Omaha and 375 kilometers from Minneapolis, yet the distances appear roughly the same in this view.
In addition to the major metropolitan areas, the rectangular north-south-east-west layout of townships is clearly visible in the rural, lower left of the image. This pattern instantly gives the sense of north orientation (toward the top left corner) and is a distinctive characteristic of the United States that helps astronauts quickly know which continent they are flying over at night.
In contrast to the regular township pattern, interstate highways converge on St. Louis, Chicago, and other large cities, much like wheel spokes around a central hub. Rivers—major visual features in daylight—become almost invisible at night. The course of the Mississippi River appears as a slightly meandering zone from Minneapolis through St. Louis and continues out of the lower right corner.
This image is one of a long series of stills which have been converted into a time-lapse video that gives a sense of flying across the Midwest at night.
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This astronaut photograph from the International Space Station highlights the symmetrical cone of Parinacota, with its well-developed summit crater (elevation 6,348 meters, or 20,827 feet, above sea level). Dark brown to dark gray surfaces to the east and west of the summit include lava flows, pyroclastic deposits, and ash.
A companion volcano, Pomerape, is located across a low saddle to the north. This volcano last erupted during the Pleistocene Epoch (approximately 3 million to 12,000 years ago). Together, Parinacota and Pomerape form the Nevados de Payachata volcanic area. The summits of both volcanoes are covered by white snowpack and small glaciers.
Eruptive activity at Parinacota has directly influenced development of the local landscape, beyond the placement of volcanic deposits. Approximately 8,000 years ago, the western flank of the volcano collapsed, creating a debris avalanche that traveled 22 kilometers (14 miles) to the west. The debris blocked rivers and streams, leading to the formation of Chungará Lake to the south (lower left). The uneven, hummocky surface of the avalanche debris provides ample catchments for water, as evidenced by the numerous small ponds and Cotacotani Lake to the west.
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This astronaut photograph illustrates slash-and-burn forest clearing along the Rio Xingu (Xingu River) in the state of Matto Grasso, Brazil. The photo was taken from the International Space Station, a platform from which astronauts can capture images of the Earth from a variety of viewing angles. The perspective above shows both the horizontal position and the extent of the fire lines next to the river, while also providing a sense of the vertical structure of the smoke plumes.
Light colored areas within the river channel are sand bars, which show that the river is in its annual low-flow/low-water stage. For a sense of scale, the river channel is approximately 63 kilometers (39 miles) long in this view. Rivers are the natural highways in Amazonia, which may explain why the burning is occurring right next to the Xingu River, one of Amazonia’s largest.
In recent years, forest preservation has gained traction in the region as a result of new valuation of the ecosystem services provided by the forest, concerns about the impact of the burning on global climate change, and greater sensitivity to the ethnic and biological heritage of Amazonia.
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In describing auroras as he saw them in the far north in 1908, poet Robert Service captured the sense of fluid motion, the vivid color, and the fiery, flame-like qualities one sees from the ground. His description works just as well in the southern hemisphere and when looking down from above.
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) used a digital camera to capture several hundred photographs of the aurora australis, or “southern lights,” while passing over the Indian Ocean on September 17, 2011. Solar panels and other sections of the ISS fill some of the upper right side of the photograph.
Auroras are a spectacular sign that our planet is electrically and magnetically connected to the Sun. These light shows are provoked by energy from the Sun and fueled by electrically charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, or magnetosphere. In this case, the space around Earth was stirred up by an explosion of hot, ionized gas from the Sun—a coronal mass ejection—that left the Sun on September 14, 2011.
The pressure and magnetic energy of the solar plasma stretches and twists the magnetic field of Earth like rubber bands, particularly in the tail on the night side. This energizes the particles trapped in our magnetic field; that energy is released suddenly as the field lines snap the particles down the field lines toward the north and south magnetic poles.
Fast-moving electrons collide with Earth’s upper atmosphere, transferring their energy to oxygen and nitrogen molecules and making them chemically “excited.” As the gases return to their normal state, they emit photons, small bursts of energy in the form of light. The color of light reflects the type of molecules releasing it; oxygen molecules and atoms tend to glow green, white or red, while nitrogen tends to be blue or purple. This ghostly light originates at altitudes of 100 to 400 kilometers (60 to 250 miles).
In the second image above, and in the last frames of the movie, light from the ground replaces the light show in the sky. Wildfires and perhaps some intentionally set agricultural fires burn on the continent of Australia, with smoke plumes faintly visible in the night sky. A gold and green halo of atmospheric airglow hangs above the horizon in the distance.
For more movie views of the Earth from above, visit: ISS Crew Earth Observations Videos.
