Satellite Images

It’s not so hard to tell Dallas from Milan, but what if you were looking from more than 500 miles above – and in the dark? This quiz from Nautilus takes city light maps snapped via satellite and asks you to sort which city matches which light signature — a surprisingly tricky task. Image: NASA…

Amazing Satellite Image Cutouts Turn Infrastructure Into Intricate Art

Human civilization has littered the natural terrain with sprawling megastructures too big to be entirely seen from the ground. But when seen from above, isolated from their surroundings—as in the work of Jenny O’Dell—these vast tangles of organized chaos will wreak even more havoc on your sense of scale. O’Dell has been using satellite imagery…

Vote on the best satellite photos from 2013

It’s that time of year — the Earth Observatory is pitting gorgeous photo against gorgeous photo in a tournament to pick the best of 2013. Set up a betting bracket, then vote the best photos in each of 4 categories. Need more enticement to spend your Monday afternoon eyeballing the Earth? Here’s a few of…

Winter Olympics Host Cities Look Amazing From Space

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has released a fresh collection of stunning satellite images to celebrate the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Thanks to them you can view most of the cities and countries that have hosted the Winter Olympics, through the eyes of NASA. Each one is more stunning than the last. The Winter Olympics…

Can you tell satellite images from microscopic pictures? Test yourself

Is this image a satellite picture or a microscope one? That’s the question posed by “Macro or Micro?,” an exhibit created by two scientists with completely different focuses. Oh, and we’ll tell you the answer below. Stephen Young and Paul Kelly are both science professors at Salem State University. Young’s a geography professor, studying vegetation…

Satellite images show how factory farms alter our landscape

What impact do factory farms have on the spaces of land they occupy? For his startling series Feedlots, Mishka Henner stitched together satellite images captured over sprawling factory farming operations. Henner stumbled across these images of factory farms while researching satellite photographs of oil fields. He didn’t realize at first why these massive, multicolored pools…

These Astounding Satellite Images Were the Best Bird’s-Eye-Views of 2012

Our daily does of satellite imagery through services like Google Maps have made looking down at Earth seem rather hum-drum at times. But there are still magical and majestic sites to be hold, as seen in this selection from 2012. DigitalGlobe recently announced their Best of 2012 picks out of their vast archive of images.…

Ten Pictures That Make Earth Look Like Art

Our planet is full of breathtaking views: oceans, mountains, forests, glaciers, and plenty more besides. Look at it all from space, though, and plenty of those views become so striking that they’re hard to distinguish from art. NASA has recently published a free ebook called Earth as Art, which brings together years’ worth of beautiful…

We Started Recording the Earth From Space Forty Years Ago and Haven’t Stopped

These days it seems like we’re constantly seeing gorgeous images of the Earth from space. It wasn’t always that way. On July 23rd 1972, NASA launched ERTS-1 satellite into space to observe the planet. We’ve never seen ourselves the same since. https://gizmodo.com/the-most-spectacular-night-view-of-earth-ever-captured-5928072 ERTS-1—Landsat 1—was the first of seven satellites in the Landsat program, which has…

The ferocious blooms of Ireland’s plankton are visible from space

Check out that blue alien swarm off the coast of Ireland. It’s phytoplankton in bloom, in an image captured last spring and released this week. They swirl in the water, almost like an intelligence… with a purpose. [ESA via NationalGeographic]

Indian Head: Placed There by Aliens?

We weren’t aware that Indians had iPods back in ancient times, but then we weren’t aware that prehistoric Egyptians flew helicopters, either. It’s a constant learning process. But check out this location in Google Maps or enter 50 0’38.20″N 110 6’48.32″W in Google Earth and you’ll see a distinct Indian head, complete with white iPod…