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The Colorado River, dammed to form Lake Powell in 1963, crosses from east to west (which is left to right here because the astronaut was looking south; north is towards the bottom of the image). The confluence of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers is also visible. Sunglint—sunlight reflected off a water surface back towards the observer—provides a silvery, mirror-like sheen to some areas of the water surfaces.
The geologic uplift of the Colorado Plateau led to rapid downcutting of rivers into the flat sedimentary bedrock, leaving spectacular erosional landforms. One such feature, The Rincon, preserves evidence of a former meander bend of the Colorado River.
Snow cover blankets the higher elevations of Navajo Mountain, a large body of igneous rock that intruded into pre-existing sedimentary rock layers and bowed them upwards into a structural dome. Snow also caps the highland surface of the Kaiparowits Plateau (approximately 2,300 meters or 7500 feet in elevation). The bulk of Navajo Mountain and the Kaiparowits Plateau are within the state of Utah; the town of Page is located just south of the border in Arizona.
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The core of old Belgrade—known as Kalemegdan—is located along the right banks of both the Danube and the Sava Rivers (image center). To the west across the Sava, Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) was constructed following World War II. The difference in urban patterns between the older parts of Belgrade and Novi Beograd is striking in this astronaut photograph from the International Space Station. Novi Beograd has an open grid structure formed by large developments and buildings such as the Palace of Serbia—a large federal building constructed during the Yugoslav period, now used to house elements of the Serbian government. By contrast, the older urban fabric of Belgrade is characterized by a denser street grid and numerous smaller structures.
Other suburban and residential development (characterized by red rooftops) extends to the south, east, and across the Danube to the north. The location of Belgrade along trade and travel routes between the East and West contributed to both its historical success as a center of trade and its fate as a battleground. Today, the city is the financial center of Serbia, while Novi Beograd supports one of the largest business districts in southeastern Europe.
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In this photo from the International Space Station, snow blankets the city of Canyon, Texas. Urban street grids and stream channels appear etched into the landscape by the snow, a result of both melting and street clearing in the urban regions and of the incised nature of stream channels in the surrounding plains. Agricultural fields are easily identified due to the even snow cover broken only by roadways between the fields. Palo Duro Canyon is largely free of snow along the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River channel and at lower elevations, allowing the red sedimentary rocks of the canyon walls to be visible.
Lake Tanglewood, a reservoir to the northeast of Canyon appears dark due to a lack of ice cover. Another dark region to the northwest of Canyon is a feed yard for cattle; any snowfall is this area has been removed by the actions of the livestock.
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In cases where only the eroded remnants of a potential impact crater have been recognized, the terms “impact structure” or “astrobleme” are used. Such is the case for the Piccaninny Impact Structure, located in northern Western Australia and featured in this astronaut photograph. This is the first confirmed image of the impact structure taken from the International Space Station (ISS).
The Piccaninny structure is located within the semi-arid Purnululu National Park and World Heritage Site, and is thought to have been formed less than 360 million years ago. Specifically, the 7.5 kilometer (4.7 mile) diameter structure forms a roughly circular plateau (approximate extent marked by the white ellipse) within the sandstone cone towers of the Bungle Bungle Range. Geological evidence of an impact structure includes regional folding and faulting patterns both within and surrounding the plateau. Features confirming an impact, such as shock textures in rocks and minerals (indicating rapid compression, melting, and fracturing (large TIF download) during impact) have not yet been found. This is perhaps due to removal during erosion of an original crater.
Surface soils of the sparsely vegetated valley adjacent to the Bungle Bungle Range appear a reddish brown at image right. More abundant green vegetation is recognizable in riparian areas along major stream and river channels, such as the Ord River (image right).
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Sunglint also illuminates the surface waters of Chesapeake Bay, located over 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the southwest of the tip of Long Island. This suggests that the Sun was low on the horizon due to the observed extent of the sunglint effect. The time of image acquisition, approximately 4:26 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, was about one hour before local sunset. There is little in this image to indicate that the region was still recovering from a major winter storm that dropped almost one meter (three feet) of snow over much of the northeastern USA less than a week earlier.
The high viewing angle from the ISS also allows the Earth’s curvature, or limb, to be seen; blue atmospheric layers gradually fade into the darkness of space across the top part of the image. Low clouds near Cape Cod, Long Island, and further down the Atlantic coastline cast shadows over the water surfaces, reducing the sunglint in some areas. A different perspective view of the region in sunglint is available here.
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Tristan da Cunha is a shield volcano, a volcanic structure with a low, broad profile and composed of silica-poor lavas (such as basalt). The upper surface of this low base appears dark green in this astronaut photograph. Steeper brown to tan colored slopes mark the central cone of the volcano at the island’s center. The summit crater, Queen Mary’s Peak, sits at an elevation of 2,060 meters (6,760 feet) above sea level. While geologic evidence indicates that eruptions have occurred from the central crater, lavas have also erupted from flank vents along the sides of the volcano and from smaller cinder cones.
The last known eruption of Tristan da Cunha took place in 1961–1962 and forced the evacuation of the only settlement on the island, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, on the northern coastline (obscured by clouds in this image). The town is considered to be the most remote permanent settlement on Earth, with its nearest neighbor located 2,173 kilometers (1,347 miles) to the northeast on the island of St. Helena.
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The relatively isolated nature of the city within the surrounding terrain is highlighted in this night time image taken from the International Space Station. The major industrial and commercial areas of both Reno and Sparks are brightly lit at image center. The major street grid is visible as orange linear features adjacent to the industrial/commercial areas. Residential areas appear dark in contrast. The Reno-Tahoe International Airport is visible as a dark, dagger-shaped region in the southeast quarter of the metropolitan area.
At the time this astronaut photograph was taken, the Moon was in a waning gibbous phase (98 percent of a full moon). Moonlight provided enough illumination of the ground so that the topography (accentuated by snow cover) surrounding the Reno-Sparks area is clearly visible following color enhancement.
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The image shows at least three sets of internal waves interacting. The most prominent set (image top left) shows a packet of several waves moving from the northwest due to the tidal flow towards the north coast of Trinidad. Two less prominent, younger sets can be seen further out to sea. A very broad set enters the view from the north and northeast, and interacts at image top center with the first set. All the internal waves are probably caused by the shelf break near Tobago (outside the image to top right). The shelf break is the step between shallow seas (around continents and islands) and the deep ocean. It is the line at which tides usually start to generate internal waves.
Over the island of Trinidad, the heating of the land surface sets off the growth of cumulus clouds. Off the coast, a light blue northwest-southeast trending plume at image center is sediment embedded in the Equatorial Current (also known as the Guyana Current). The current is transporting material to the northwest—in almost the opposite direction of the internal waves. The current flows strongly from east to west around Trinidad, all the way from equatorial Africa, driven by year-round easterly winds. Seafarers in the vicinity of Trinidad are warned that the current—and its local reverse eddies—make navigation complicated and sometimes dangerous for smaller craft in these waters.
Astronauts also have observed internal waves in other parts of the world, such as San Francisco and the Strait of Gibraltar.
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Several craters lie near the 1,117-meter summit of Sakurajima. The northernmost crater, Kita-dake, last erupted approximately 5,000 years ago; to the south, Minami-dake and Showa craters have been the site of frequent eruptions since at least the eighth century. The ash plume visible near the volcano’s summit may have originated from either Minami-dake or Showa.
This image highlights the proximity of several large urban areas—Aira, Kagoshima, Kanoya, Kirishima, and Miyakonojo—to Sakurajima. This has prompted studies of potential health hazards presented by the volcanic ash (such as Hillman et al. 2012), and those findings are particularly important if more powerful explosive eruptive activity resumes. The Tokyo Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) of the Japan Meteorological Agency issues advisories when eruptions occur. An advisory on the activity in this image was issued less than one hour before the astronaut took the photograph, by which time the plume tail had encountered northeast-trending upper-level winds.
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Polar mesospheric clouds have been observed from all human vantage points in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres—from the surface, in aircraft, and from the International Space Station (ISS) —and tend to be most visible during the late spring and early summer. Some atmospheric scientists seek to understand their mechanisms of formation, while others have identified them as potential indicators of atmospheric changes resulting from increases in greenhouse gas concentrations.
This astronaut photograph was taken when the ISS was over the Pacific Ocean south of French Polynesia. While most polar mesospheric cloud images are taken from the ISS with relatively short focal length lenses (to maximize the field of view), this image was taken with a long lens (400 mm) allowing for additional detail of the cloud forms. Below the brightly-lit noctilucent clouds, across the center of the image, the pale orange band is the stratosphere.
