18 Striking Images from Space Show Earth’s Rich Tapestry

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The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. An international organisation with 20 Member States, the ESA in its current form was created in 1975. Since then they have shared amazing research and images for the world to learn from. With almost 12,000 high-resolution images available through their website, their extensive archive is a great online resource for research and inspiration.

1. Namib Desert

Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012. The blue and white area is the dry river bed of the Tsauchab. Black dots of vegetation are concentrated close to the river’s main route, while salt deposits appear bright white. Running through the river valley, a road connects Sossusvlei to the Sesriem settlement. At the road’s 45th kilometre, seen at the lower-central part of the image, a white path shoots off and ends at a circular parking area at the base of a dune. This is Dune 45, a popular tourist stop on the way to and from Sossusvlei. In this image, there appears to be some shadow on the western side. From this we can deduce that the image was acquired during the late morning.

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2. Venice, Italy

The islands that make up the Italian city of Venice and the surrounding Venetian Lagoon are pictured in this image. Snaking through the central districts is the Grand Canal, with the Santa Lucia train station at its northern end and the Saint Mark Basin at its southern end. Zooming in, we can see water buses and taxis navigating the canal and gondolas docked along the edge. The square island to the north is San Michele. Once a prison island, it became a cemetery when Napoleon’s occupying forces declared burial on the main islands unsanitary. This image was acquired on 22 June 2008 by Ikonos-2, a commercial satellite that provides panchromatic and multispectral high-resolution imagery.

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3. Algerian Sahara

The image shows the extraordinary landscape of the Tanezrouft Basin, one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara desert, in south-central Algeria. The region is known as ‘land of terror’ because of its lack of water and vegetation. As visible, this region is characterised by dark sandstone hills, steep canyon walls, salt flats (white), stone plateaus, sandstone outcrop patterns of concentric loops and sprawling seas of multi-storey sand dunes known as ‘ergs’. Erg Mehedjibat, which appears as a yellow bouquet of flowers (upper right), is made up of a cluster of small star dunes that grow upward rather than laterally. Japan’s ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) captured this image on 24 June 2009 with its Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2 (AVNIR-2) instrument.

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4. The Imperial Valley in Southern California

The rich agricultural soils of the Imperial Valley in the desert region of Southern California, US, are featured in this image acquired on 4 July 2010 by Japan’s four-tonne ALOS Earth observation satellite. The valley begins from the southern end of the Salton Sea (top left) and extends southward for some 80 km into Mexico. The cities of Brawley (bottom right), Westmorland (bottom left) and Calipatria (top) are visible, along with Ramer (top) and Finney Lakes (centre right).

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5. Plentiful plankton

This Envisat image captures a plankton bloom larger than the country of Greece stretching across the Barents Sea off the tip of northern Europe. Envisat acquired this image on 19 August 2009 with its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument.

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6. Rainforest river, Brazil

This image from the Envisat satellite shows the Juruá River snaking through the Amazon rainforest in western Brazil. Along the river’s main course are free-standing ‘oxbow lakes’, formed when a river changes course. This image is a compilation of three images from Envisat’s radar, acquired on 2 January, 1 February and 3 March 2012. The individual images are each assigned a colour – red, green and blue – and when combined, reveal changes in the surface between Envisat’s passes.

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7. Scandinavian snows

In this image from the Envisat satellite, clouds cover the North Sea and sweep down to the strait between Denmark (lower-right corner) and Norway (upper-centre). In the upper-right corner, a thicker blanket of clouds covers south eastern Norway and spreads into Sweden. Located on the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway is Europe’s northernmost country and is famed for its fjords. Some of these are visible in the image as dark lines between the white and snow-covered land. Near the top of the image, we can see part of Norway’s longest and deepest fjord, the Sognefjord. In the lower-right corner, we can see part of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula, with small and large bodies of water speckling the flat terrain.

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8. The ‘treasure peninsula’ of Kazakhstan

This Kompsat-2 image was acquired on 24 November 2012 over southwestern Kazakhstan’s Mangistau region east of the Caspian Sea. Along the top of the image we can see water and wetlands, with eroded areas at the top and on the right. The majority of the image is dominated by flatland covered with low-lying vegetation. The bright web of roads in the lower left section of the image is the Karakuduk oil field. The white squares in this ‘web’ indicate where wells are located. We can also see buildings and other structures related to oil production. Kazakhstan – and in particular, the Mangistau oblast – has large fossil fuel reserves and an abundant supply of other minerals and metals. Because of this, Mangistau is sometimes called the ‘treasure peninsula’ of Kazakhstan.

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9. The Palouse region

Rolling hills of farmland in the northwest United States are pictured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite. Acquired over Washington state, the south and west areas of the image are in Walla Walla county, while the central-eastern-upper area is Columbia County. The area pictured is part of the Palouse region – an agricultural zone that mainly produces wheat and legumes. The rolling, picturesque landscape has sometimes been compared to Italy’s Tuscany. Zooming in, we can see swirling patterns in the vegetation created by ploughs. Roads cut through the shallow valleys and buildings can also be seen. Touchet River, known for its trout fishing, can been seen in the lower left. The diagonal line running next to the river is a road that connects the town of Prescott to the west to Waitsburg to the east.

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10. Ganges’ dazzling delta

This Envisat image highlights the Ganges Delta, the world’s largest delta, in the south Asia area of Bangladesh (visible) and India. The delta plain, about 350-km wide along the Bay of Bengal, is formed by the confluence of the rivers Ganges, the Brahmaputra and Meghna. As radar images represent surface backscatter rather than reflected light, there is no colour in a standard radar image. This image was created by combining three Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar acquisitions (20 January 2009, 24 February 2009 and 31 March 2009) taken over the same area. The colours in the image result from variations in the surface that occurred between acquisitions.