Earth As Art 5

A feathery, blood red streak cuts across the heart of this image. The translucent red paint stroke is not actually a feature of the land. It is a cirrus cloud detected by Landsat 8’s cirrus band. This cirrus cloud, which hovers over the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, is invisible in natural color imagery.

Source: Landsat 8

Even with the calming blue tones, there is an unsettling feeling in the jagged marks that lead to a circular feature. This feature is Gweni-Fada Crater, a meteorite impact crater in the Ennedi Plateau of northern Chad. In addition to the tension between calm and storm, there is a sense that this scene could pass as a view on another planet.

Source: Landsat 8

Snow covers the landscape in southwestern Minnesota just a day before the winter solstice. It may look like a stark black and white image, but it is really a natural color image. The Minnesota River flows from the upper left to the lower right.

Source: Landsat 8

Tranquil colors and patterns intermingle near Argentina’s Colorado River, which runs across the upper one-third of the image. The calming textures are interrupted by a violent splash in the center, the result of volcanic action from the Auca Mahuida Volcanic Field from long ago.

Source: Landsat 8

Cracking ice on the Arctic Ocean fractures like broken glass in far northern Canada. Uninhabited Eglinton Island is the land on the right. Fingers of land from Prince Patrick Island stretch downward in the upper left of the image.

Source: Landsat 8

The main feature here, near Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, is the Schooner Cays shoal complex. The tidal sand ridges, parabolic bars, and intervening channels explode in a blue rhythm. The Bahamas have the third most extensive coral reef in the world.

Source: Landsat 8

In shallow waters surrounding the Tyuleniy Archipelago in the Caspian Sea, chunks of ice were the artists. The 3-meter-deep water makes the dark green vegetation on the sea bottom visible. The lines scratched in that vegetation were caused by ice chunks, pushed upward and downward by wind and currents, scouring the sea floor.

Source: Landsat 8

A serene gradient from red to smoky blue-gray seems to mask a chaotic scene underneath, expressing a wide range of emotion. Looking like a NASA closeup of Jupiter, this image reveals sediment in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast.

Source: Landsat 8

Most of this image is in the Simpson Desert Regional Reserve of South Australia. The shallow lakes, appearing in colors ranging from nearly black to aqua blue, are dry most of the time. Here, they seem to stretch with the sand dunes, which extend for hundreds of kilometers.

Source: Landsat 8

Abstract figures seem to appear on these South American plateaus. It is reminiscent of Southwestern artistic style with a modernist abstract twist. These farm fields are on the tops of plateaus in northeastern Brazil. Where the edges of the fields are ragged lines, the fields have been planted right up to the edge of cliffs.

Source: Landsat 8

Tantibus is Latin for nightmare. This image does appear to be a creepy, foggy, haunted scene. But there is nothing to worry about—it is just science data. The elevation data shown here, recorded by space shuttle Endeavour in 2000, are from the Rocky Mountains of Utah and Colorado. Dark areas are low elevation, and the brightest spots are the