Rio San Pablo, as it empties into the Golfo de Montijo in Veraguas, Panama, is the first light from the International Space Station's new ISERV Pathfinder Earth observation (EO) system. The image was acquired at 1:44 p.m. local time on Feb. 16, 2013. NASA hopes the new system will really make a difference in people's lives.
With uses ranging from jewelry to catalytic converters, platinum ranks among the most prized and expensive metals. About 70 percent of the world's platinum is mined in South Africa's Bushveld Igneous Complex, along with significant quantities of palladium, rhodium, chromium and vanadium.
In this Landsat 5 satellite image, 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.
Resembling a giant star with one of its five arms missing, this nighttime astronaut photograph of Reno, Nev., stands out in stark contrast from the surrounding Sierra Nevada foothills.
Moving tens of meters below the sea's surface off the northern coast of Trinidad, subtle sea arcs known as internal waves, visible here from the International Space Station, can make navigation hazardous, especially for smaller craft.
This Jan. 10, 2013, photograph acquired by astronauts on the International Space Station highlights Sakurajima, one of Japan's most active volcanoes. Sakurajima began forming approximately 13,000 years ago. Prior to 1914, it was an island in Kagoshima Bay, but it was joined to the mainland by the deposition of volcanic material following a major eruption that year.
On Jan. 15, 2013, NASA's Aqua satellite captured a trail of serpentine cloud shapes snaking across the eastern Pacific Ocean. Some were natural clouds, while others were ship tracks”clouds seeded by particles in ship exhaust.
A thick river of haze hovered over the Indo-Gangetic Plain in January 2013, casting a gray pall over northern India and Bangladesh. On Jan. 10, 2012, NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the haze hugging the Himalayas and spilling out into the Ganges delta and Bengal Sea.
Snow-covered deserts are rare, but that's exactly what the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite observed as it passed over the Taklimakan Desert in western China on Jan. 2, 2013.
Nothing identifies the human population along the Nile River more clearly than the lights illuminating the river valley and delta at night. In this satellite image, the night lights resemble a giant calla lily, with just one kink in its long stem, at the great bend near the city of Luxor.
