Earth as Art: The Most Beautiful Landsat Satellite Images
A joint venture between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey,
the Landsat program is the longest running enterprise for acquisition of
satellite imagery of Earth providing images of the planet for the last
40 years. The Landsat satellites make loops around the earth constantly
collecting images of the surface through the use of a variety of sensing
devices. Since the beginning of the Landsat program in 1972, the images
and data have been available to all countries around the world, and
used in a variety of research work such as measurement of rain forest
loss, determining urban growth, and population change.
Beyond
the scientific information they supply, some Landsat images are simply
striking to look at, presenting spectacular views of mountains, valleys,
and islands as well as forests, grasslands, and agricultural patterns.
By selecting certain features and coloring them from a digital palate,
the U.S. Geological Survey has created a series of "Earth as Art"
perspectives that demonstrate an artistic resonance in satellite land
imagery and provide a special avenue of insight about the geography of
each scene.
1. In the style of Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night," massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Population explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, like the one shown here, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters, fueling the growth and reproduction of these tiny plants.
2.
Countless lakes, sloughs, and ponds are scattered throughout this scene
of the Yukon Delta in southwest Alaska. One of the largest river deltas
in the world, and protected as part of the Yukon Delta National
Wildlife Refuge, the river's sinuous waterways seem like blood vessels
branching out to enclose an organ.
3.
Small, blocky shapes of towns, fields, and pastures surround the
graceful swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River, the largest river
system in North America. Countless oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the
meandering river south of Memphis, Tennessee, on the border between
Arkansas and Mississippi.
4.
What look like pale yellow paint streaks slashing through a mosaic of
mottled colors are ridges of wind-blown sand that make up Erg Iguidi, an
area of ever-shifting sand dunes extending from Algeria into Mauritania
in northwestern Africa. Erg Iguidi is one of several Saharan ergs, or
sand seas, where individual dunes often surpass 500 meters (nearly a
third of a mile) in both width and height.
5.
The scary face in this image is actually inundated patches of shallow
Lake Eyre (pronounced "air") in the desert country of northern South
Australia. An ephemeral feature of this flat, parched landscape, Lake
Eyre is Australia's largest lake when it's full. However in the last 150
years, it has filled completely only three times.