Images from NASA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite show the power outages in the clear skies over Washington, D.C., and Baltimore that occurred on June 29, 2012. The outages were the result of a derecho, a rare, fast-moving thunderstorm system that packs the power of a tornado.
A layer of stratocumulus clouds over the Pacific Ocean served as the backdrop on June 21, 2012, when NASA's Terra satellite captured this rainbow-like optical phenomenon known as a glory. An added viewing bonus in this image is the swirling von Karman vortices visible to the right of the glory.
There have been many images of the full disc of Earth from space, but few have looked quite like this. Using natural-color images acquired by the recently launched Suomi-NPP satellite, a NASA scientist has compiled a stunning new view showcasing the Arctic and high latitudes.
NASA's Aqua satellite observed ice retreat in Hudson Bay, which typically begins in May and can melt out completely sometime in July. In the April 2012 image, abundant ice makes individual features difficult to distinguish. However, in the June 2012 image, Akimiski Island and the Belcher Islands seem to magically appear.
The Sor Kaydak in Kazakhstan is a salt marsh that leads into the northeastern bulb of the Caspian Sea. The central 50 kilometers of the 180-kilometer marsh depression is shown in this photograph from the International Space Station.
A DigitalGlobe image shows the world's largest hand-painted flag, created by artist Scott LoBaido, on the 3.5-acre roof of Lamons Gasket Company near William P. Hobby Airport in Houston.
The setting sun highlights cloud patterns”as well as the Pacific Ocean surface itself”in this photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS was over Chile’s Andes Mountains at the time.
This astronaut photograph highlights part of Lake Powell. Looking somewhat like a donut or automobile tire from the vantage point of the International Space Station, the Rincon (image center) is an entrenched and abandoned meander, or loop, of the Colorado River.
This astronaut photograph shows the white, salt-covered floor in the northwest corner of the Etosha Pan, a great dry lake in northern Namibia, surrounded by multicolored water features. In a rare event shown in this image, rainwater has flowed down the Ekuma River”which appears as a blue line within the light gray-green floodplain”and fills a lobe of the lake with light green water.
From the vantage point of an astronaut on the International Space Station, the Ouarkziz Impact Crater, located in northwestern Algeria close to the Moroccan border, is clearly visible with a magnifying camera lens.
