Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, appears as a brightly colored patchwork in this nighttime astronaut photograph. Riydah's population has risen dramatically during the last half century, from 150,000 in 1960 to an astounding 5.4 million in 2012.
This astronaut photo reveals the Karymsky stratovolcaono less than two hours after it erupted on Nov. 9, 2012. Karymsky is the most active of Kamchatka's eastern volcanoes, a region where, on a geologic time scale, volcanism has occurred constantly since at least the late 18th century.
Each fall, Hindus around the world light lamps, candles and firecrackers for the festival known as Diwali. A colorful satellite image of India that claims to show the region lit for Diwali has been circulating on the Internet, but it's not authentic. This image, collected by the Suomi NPP satellite, is the real deal.
The scenes of devastation and wreckage that Superstorm Sandy (2012) and Hurricane Katrina (2005) left behind were tragically similar. But from a meteorological perspective, satellite data reveal the storms were very different.
Seawater off the east coast of Greenland looked a bit like marbled paper in October 2012. The shifting swirls of white in this image were sea ice, as observed by NASA's Aqua satellite on Oct. 17, 2012.
Hurricane Sandy made landfall along the southern New Jersey coast on the evening of Oct. 29, 2012. The Suomi NPP satellite acquired the accompanying image of the storm around 3:35 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 30.
When it comes to glaciers, Turkey probably isn't the first country that comes to mind. However, numerous peaks in the rugged mountains of eastern Turkey are high enough and cold enough to sustain year-round ice.
A huge geoglyph in the shape of an elk or deer discovered in Russia may predate Peru’s famous Nazca Lines by thousands of years. The stone structure, located near Lake Zjuratkul in the Ural Mountains, north of Kazakhstan, has an elongated muzzle, four legs and two antlers.
In late September, within a span of just 11 days, the forests of far eastern Siberia dramatically changed from green”with only a slight hint of fall color”to a deep brown. The MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite captured the fall transformation in a recent pair of images.
On Sept. 19, 2012, NASA's Terra satellite collected views of the Three Sisters and Broken Top volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains near Bend, Ore. The accompanying image comprises an eclectic mix of cirrus clouds, glaciers and the Pole Creek Fire, which blazed nearby in the Deschutes National Forest.
