Earlier this year, an astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS) snapped some striking photos, and an eerily beautiful video, of a "fireball" streaking over Earth as chunks of space debris burned up in the nighttime sky.

NASA's Chris Williams, who lived and worked on the ISS between November 2025 and July 2026, captured the eye-catching images from the station's cupola — a large, roughly dome-shaped series of windows that constantly points down at our planet — and later shared them on the social media platform X.

"Just as we were passing over West Africa, I saw a bright object directly below us, streaking through the upper atmosphere," Williams wrote in the post. "I saw its tail grow and then split apart into a shower of smaller pieces," he added. "It was quite a light show!"

Williams initially peered down at Earth to catch a glimpse of the Russian cargo spacecraft Progress 95, which successfully delivered essential supplies and additional equipment to the ISS later the same day. Instead, he saw what he believed was "some piece of orbital debris or a satellite breaking up as it entered the atmosphere."

Live Science's sister site Space.com later revealed that Williams had actually witnessed the burning remains of the Russian Soyuz rocket that had carried Progress 95 into space, after it lifted off from a recently repaired launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Shortly after deploying the resupply shuttle into low Earth orbit, the rocket's fairings and booster fell back toward our planet as expected, breaking apart into smaller pieces that were superheated and later vaporized by intense friction as they hit the upper atmosphere, according to Space.com. A very similar fireball was seen above Australia in August 2023, when another Soyuz rocket reentered the atmosphere.

Russia's prior resupply mission, Progress 94, also made headlines earlier this year when one of its antennae failed to deploy after separation from its Soyuz rocket, forcing cosmonauts (Russian astronauts) to use a remote control "backup system" to dock the spacecraft to the ISS.

Historically, the only fireballs visible in Earth's skies have been those caused by meteors, which can similarly break apart in flames. We were recently reminded of this when fireballs were spotted above the U.S. this spring, including one space rock that exploded with a massive sonic boom over Ohio and another that crashed through the roof of a house in Houston. (A NASA statement said the fireball Williams witnessed also may have been caused by meteor activity but was more likely to be the Soyuz rocket.)

However, fireballs from human-made objects are becoming more common. The number of spacecraft orbiting Earth has skyrocketed (pun intended) in recent decades, and "what goes up must come down."

Most spacecraft and large pieces of space junk burn up around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface — just below the imaginary boundary with space, known as the Kármán line. While this may lead to visually stunning spectacles like the one Williams captured, scientists are starting to realize that these fireballs may be having a bigger impact on the upper atmosphere than they previously expected.

In recent years, researchers have detected a sharp increase in atmospheric metal pollution from vaporized spacecraft. And while they are still trying to figure out what effect this may have, some scientists have proposed that it could affect the ozone layer or potentially alter Earth's magnetic field.

Additionally, as the number of falling spacecraft rises, the chances that debris may fall to Earth's surface — after failing to properly burn up upon reentry — also increase. This came to the fore in March 2024, when the remains of a 3-ton battery pack that was discarded from the ISS crashed into a family home in Florida.

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This eye-catching satellite snap from a decade ago shows a pair of hurricanes barreling toward Hawaii. The clouds swirling around the twin cyclones make them look eerily like the eyes of a pale face smiling up at space. The sight appears even spookier when viewed on a weather map (see below).

The surprisingly symmetrical storms — Hurricane Madeline (left) and Hurricane Lester (right) — were the 14th and 13th named storms, respectively, during 2016's Pacific hurricane season, which is tied for the sixth-most-active year on record, with 22 total named storms.

Madeline peaked as a Category 4 storm on Aug. 30, reaching maximum wind speeds of around 130 mph (210 km/h). Lester also briefly became a Category 4 storm on Sept. 1, reaching a maximum speed just below Madeline's, but it quickly weakened to Category 3.

On Aug. 30, the day after the image was taken, Madeline was just under 400 miles (650 kilometers) from Hawaii's Big Island, while Lester was around 900 miles (1,450 km) behind on the same trajectory, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. At the time, meteorologists were uncertain whether the pair would hit the island.

The Central Pacific Hurricane Center later issued a hurricane warning for the state of Hawaii, saying that Madeline, in particular, would pass "dangerously close to the Big Island," according to the Earth Observatory. However, neither storm ended up making landfall. (In the photo, the Big Island is obscured by reflected sunlight, known as a sunglint, on the left side of the image.)

Madeline eventually passed south of Hawaii on Aug. 31. However, by then, it had been downgraded to Category 1. Lester passed north of the Big Island on Sept. 2 and came within around 130 miles (210 km) of Honolulu, before sharply turning northward, where it petered out.

Although neither hurricane made landfall — meaning the eye of the storm did not pass over a landmass — they still caused high winds, heavy rainfall and strong surf across the state.

Despite being in the middle of the corridor where most Pacific hurricanes form, Hawaii's islands have surprising good luck in avoiding the supercharged storms.

For example, in 2025, Hurricane Kiko was similarly spotted from space bearing down on the island state. But like Madeline and Lester, it suddenly changed course and weakened at the last minute.

Hawaii usually manages to dodge the worst effects of hurricanes for two reasons. First, the islands are surrounded by a near-constant area of high pressure on their eastern side, where most hurricanes come from. Second, strong winds often blow eastward across the islands, according to FOX Weather. These factors create a sort of invisible shield around the islands, causing storms to skirt around them.

However, given the recent rise in extreme weather events across the globe — caused by human-caused climate change — as well as changes to regional weather patterns, the islands may not stay so lucky forever.

For example, in August and September, two hurricanes — Lowell and Lala — skimmed unusually closely past the island of Kauai, causing a significant amount of damage to power lines, boats and other coastal infrastructure. Researchers think the ongoing "super" El Niño, which officially began in May and has already caused record-breaking sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, may be partially to blame for these storms, according to The Guardian.

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This striking satellite snap shows the scorching land and sea surface temperatures that hit Southern Europe during one of the continent's record-breaking heat waves this summer.

The image was created using data from the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) on board the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-3B satellite. It was selected for this week's edition of Earth from space by Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth observation programs at ESA and head of the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) in Frascati, Italy.

Live Science recently visited Frascati to see ESRIN's newly operational Space HPC supercomputer and sat down with Cheli for an in-depth discussion about Earth observation. When asked about her favorite satellite image, Cheli highlighted this photo as one that caught her eye this year.

In the thermal image, dark reds highlight terrestrial temperatures in excess of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) across most of Spain and parts of France and Italy, while dark purple spots show highs above 104 F (40 C) across patches of Spain and North Africa. The image also reveals sea surface temperatures spiking across the Mediterranean Sea. (The colors in the image do not represent the same temperatures on land and sea. For example, orange indicates temperatures of around 86 F (30 C) on land but around 73 F, or 23 C, at sea.)

Cheli said that assessing how terrestrial and marine environments interact during extreme weather events is really important and that including both in the same image is the only way to appreciate the true scale of this heat wave: "You see the red in the sea, and you see the red on the land, and I think it gives the feeling of the heat wave that we've all been living through this summer," she said.

While many people may find such images related to human-caused climate change disheartening, Cheli sees it as a sign of hope that orbiting spacecraft can monitor otherwise-invisible changes to our planet's surface in such detail.

"It makes me feel that we can do a lot about it," she said. "It makes me feel that we have tools and certainly information capabilities to support, help and also raise awareness about this topic."

Cheli told Live Science that ESA's ability to monitor extreme weather events like this will only improve as the agency launches new-and-improved spacecraft into orbit. In September, ESA successfully launched Sentinel-3C, the successor to the spacecraft that snapped this image, which has already captured its first photos of Earth and will help study future heat waves in greater detail.

Europe's record-breaking summer

Between late May and mid-August, parts of Europe were hit by at least five separate heat waves, meaning temperatures stayed unusually high throughout the season. "We had, I would say, the hottest summer ever," Cheli said.

The peak heat occurred in June, when the average temperature for that month reached 69 F (20.7 C) — its highest in Western Europe's recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization. (This average includes nighttime temperatures, which is why it seems relatively low compared to other temperatures mentioned so far.)

Eight countries — Austria, Belarus, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — recorded their highest land surface temperature of all time at various points throughout this summer, and several others had record temperatures for a specific month or region.

The extreme weather caused widespread droughts across the continent, some of which are still ongoing, and helped trigger several wildfires, including a series of particularly large blazes in France. Experts think the high temperatures resulted in at least 35,000 excess deaths across Europe, although the true number is expected to be much higher, according to The Guardian.

The heat waves were caused by "heat domes," which are pockets of high pressure in the atmosphere that trap warm air beneath them, like placing a lid on top of a boiling pot. These are also linked to higher sea surface temperatures.

The ongoing super El Niño began in May and has already led to record temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, but it did not contribute to the European heat waves, according to ESA. Instead, the record temperatures are a continuation of recent global warming trends.

However, El Niño could lead to more extreme weather this winter, in Europe and in North America.

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This recent satellite snap shows off a multicolored "mosaic" of tightly packed mini farms covering part of Taiwan in the western Pacific Ocean. The sea of fields and shade nets demonstrates the scale of the agricultural challenges facing the densely populated island.

Taiwan is 14,000 square miles (36,000 square kilometers) — about the same size as Maryland — but has a population around four times as large, with approximately 23 million people living there, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. This places a heavy burden on the island's agricultural industry to provide enough food for everyone on the island, especially as large parts of the landmass are covered by mountains and rainforest.

Researchers estimate that there is only around 3,200 square feet (300 square meters) of Taiwanese farmland per citizen, which is around two-thirds the size of a basketball court, according to the Earth Observatory. This is around 10 times less than the equivalent for U.S. citizens.

The majority of the island's food is produced within Yunlin County, which is situated around halfway along the Chianan Plain, a lengthy strip of flat terrain that hugs Taiwan's west coast. Just under half of the county is visible in the satellite image, which spans roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) across.

The flat ground in Yunlin County, as well as access to water from the island's largest river, the Zhuoshui (visible across the top of the image), makes it an ideal place to grow a variety of different crops, including "rice, sweet potatoes, peanuts, corn, sugarcane, garlic, scallions, coffee, fruit, and leafy greens," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

The average size of a farm in Yunlin County is under 100,000 square feet (10,000 square m), which is around 90 times smaller than the average U.S. farm. As a result, the region looks like a giant patchwork of tens of thousands of irregular cuboids when viewed from above.

The sizes of Taiwanese farms are restricted by longstanding legislation that limits the amount of land any individual can own, according to the Earth Observatory. Most of the farms are passed down from generation to generation.

While Yunlin County's agricultural mosaic is fairly consistent across this image, two main areas stand out from the rest (see below).

The first outlying region is a swarm of blue and turquoise rectangles surrounding the town of Xiluo in the upper right of the image (just below the river). These farms are covered with plastic shade nets, which shelter them from harsh sunlight in the summer and monsoon-like rains in the wet season

The second and perhaps most noticeable anomaly is a cluster of much larger, lightly colored farms near the town of Baozhong (bottom left of the photo). These are sugarcane fields, left over from when Japan controlled Taiwan between 1895 and 1945.

A large portion of the Chianan Plain was used to grow sugarcane by the Japanese, who also constructed railway lines to move the crop across the island. However, most of these fields have since been repurposed, and all but one of the railway lines have fallen out of use.

In addition to growing crops, these small farms are used to rear livestock, including chickens, cattle and "millions of pigs," according to the Earth Observatory.

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This eye-catching astronaut photo mosaic shows a rare "sunglint" transforming a snaking reservoir into a giant silver river.

The winding waterway at the heart of this image is a section of Lake Powell in southern Utah. The artifical reservoir starts around 70 miles (110 kilometers) southwest of the town of Moab and ends roughly 60 miles (100 km) northeast of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. When full, Lake Powell holds up to 1.2 billion cubic feet (33.3 million cubic meters) of water, making it the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. — close behind the nearby Lake Mead, which stretches across the Arizona-Nevada border.

Lake Powell is located on the Colorado River, inside a steep ravine known as Glen Canyon. The reservoir emerged in the 1960s, following the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, which caused water levels to rise by around 200 feet (60 meters) over the next two decades. In addition to generating hydroelectric power, the artificial lake has become a popular tourist destination. (Lake Mead is also located along the Colorado River and was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam.)

This image mosaic, which stitches together several astronaut photos into a single image, was captured during a sunglint, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. This phenomenon occurs when sunlight bounces off a reflective surface directly into the line of sight of an observer in orbit, such as a satellite or an astronaut, giving the object a metallic, mirror-like gleam.

Normally, this effect would be visible only across a small section of the lake. But by combining photos taken as the sunglint moved along the reservoir's length, the entire body of water was illuminated.

The reservoir is named after John Wesley Powell, an explorer and former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, who mapped out Glen Canyon and other parts of the Colorado River in the late 1860s. Powell was particularly captivated by Glen Canyon, which contained a "labyrinth of overhanging cliffs, hanging gardens, sweeping river bends, and natural arches set amidst a backdrop of colorful buttes and mesas," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

Powell later described his recollections of the canyon. "Past these towering monuments, past these mounded billows of orange sandstone, past these oak-set glens, past these fern-decked alcoves, past these mural curves, we glide hour after hour, stopping now and then, as our attention is arrested by some new wonder," Powell wrote in his 1875 book "Canyons of the Colorado."

Some of the sights that Powell marveled over still exist, including many smaller canyons that branch off the reservoir and are cast in deep shadow. A similar effect is seen in sections of Utah's Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River that has long perplexed geologists due to its ability to flow "uphill."

From above, one of the canyon's most striking geological features ‪—‬ a large, doughnut-shaped depression known as The Rincon ‪—‬ is visible as a dark ring surrounding a bend along one of the widest sections of the lake. This rusty doughnut, which is up to 3 miles (5 km) across, is a former section of the Colorado River that dried out thousands of years ago when part of the canyon collapsed, enabling water to bypass the rocky loop.

However, many of the other wonders that Powell described have been lost beneath the reservoir's elevated water level. These include a side canyon dubbed the Music Temple, which was shaped in a way that gave it remarkable acoustic properties, according to the Earth Observatory.

During periods of drought, when the reservoir's water levels temporarily drop, other lost geological treasures can be exposed. For example, in 2023, researchers found rare fossils from a mammal-like Jurassic creature lurking beneath the lake's high-water line.

In recent years, some environmental groups have petitioned to drain Lake Powell and return Glen Canyon to its former glory as the "heart of the Colorado River," according to Newsweek. Such a change may help to alleviate pressure on the rest of the river, which has lost a significant amount of water in recent decades. But experts told Newsweek that this is unlikely to happen.

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This striking satellite snap shows a giant, "sponge-like" dome towering over central Brazil. The dark monolith and the rare biome that covers it are key to the region's famed hot springs.

The imposing oval structure, which is around 12 miles (20 kilometers) long and 7 miles (12 km) across, is known as the Caldas Novas dome, or Serra de Caldas, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. It is located in southeast Goiás state and towers up to 1,000 feet (300 meters) above the surrounding landscape, although an optical illusion known as relief inversion may cause some viewers to see the raised land as a bowl-like depression.

The monolithic feature, which one 2004 study predicted could be at least 600 million years old, gets its name from the town of Caldas Novas, which is visible in the satellite image, sandwiched between the dark-green dome and Lake Corumbá, an artificial reservoir created by a nearby hydroelectric dam. The town is home to around 100,000 people but receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, many of whom travel there to bathe in its famous hot springs.

The dome is blanketed by savanna known as the Cerrado, which covers around a quarter of Brazil and is the second-most-abundant biome in South America, behind rainforests like the Amazon.

This biome is a tropical savanna. It is much more ecologically diverse than most savannas and is often described as a mix of woodland, grassland and wetland.

The Cerrado readily soaks up rainwater, making the dome act like a giant sponge. The collected liquid percolates through the monolith's inner structure, refilling submerged groundwater reservoirs that help feed the nearby hot springs with a regular supply of warm water, even throughout the region's dry season, according to the Earth Observatory.

The Cerrado is often called the "cradle of waters" in Brazil because of its role in recharging groundwater and feeding major rivers across the country. It also helps to feed several waterfalls around the dome's edges (see below).

Unlike most thermal baths, the hot springs surrounding Caldas Novas are not heated by volcanic activity. Instead, water within deep fractures in the rock is "heated by Earth's naturally higher temperatures at depth before it circulates back to the surface," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

Many experts previously thought the monolith was formed by an ancient "magmatic intrusion," in which molten rock burst through the planet's crust. However, a 2021 study largely disproved this theory, suggesting instead that the structure was most likely created by other geological processes, instead.

The dome and its surroundings are protected as part of Caldas Novas State Park, which was established in 1970. It is home to several unique species, including the red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata) birds, the pequi tree (Caryocar brasiliense), and the wolf's plant (Solanum lycocarpum), according to the Earth Observatory.

But the park's main purpose is to protect the Cerrado covering the dome. In recent decades, large swaths of the biome have been cleared across South America to make way for more agricultural land, similar to the deforestation that plagues the Amazon rainforest.

You can see this issue in the satellite photo. The region surrounding the dome was likely once covered with the Cerrado, but it is now a patchwork of farms and fields.

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This intriguing astronaut photo shows a bright-white, salty surprise lurking at the summit of a giant volcano in the Sahara. The ancient, lava-covered peak also holds hidden, shadowy waterways, despite its extremely arid environment.

Emi Koussi (also known as Emi Koussou) is a pyroclastic shield volcano in northern Chad. It's located within the Tibesti Massif, a volcanic mountain range that straddles the border between Chad and Libya. The volcano's dome-shaped cone is up to 43 miles (69 kilometers) across and reaches a maximum elevation of 11,204 feet (3,415 meters) above sea level, making it the tallest peak in the Sahara, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Emi Koussi is classified as extinct, and there are no historical records of it erupting, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program. However, scientists know that it was once highly active because its gradual slopes are covered with ancient lava. Some experts think this once-molten rock is around 2 million years old and likely flowed with low viscosity, "more like motor oil than toothpaste," Earth Observatory representatives previously wrote.

At the volcano's summit lies a complex caldera system that spans up to 9 miles (15 km) across and is covered with various volcanic vents and cones (see photos below). A second, smaller crater, dubbed Era Kohor, lies at the caldera's southern end.

Nestled within Era Kohor, a thick crust of brilliant-white salt covers the lowest part of the caldera's floor. This crystal layer, which reaches up to 3,300 feet (1,000 m) across, reflects light in such a way that astronauts commonly confuse it for snow, which rarely falls in the area.

The salty compound, known as natron, is a mix of sodium carbonate decahydrate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. It was left behind by an ancient salty lake that once filled Era Kohor but has long since evaporated.

This is not the only notable natron deposit in the Tibesti Massif. Around 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Emi Koussi (also in northern Chad) lies a volcanic caldera known as Trou au Natron (or Doon Orei), which contains a layer of the salty substance that is arranged with a pair of cones in a way that makes it look like a giant skull when viewed from above. This unusual deposit lies next to another hefty volcano, dubbed Toussidé, which is also covered with tendrils of ancient lava.

While Emi Koussi's ancient activity was mostly centered at its summit, a pair of volcanic cones can be seen on the mountain's northern flank. The lava that quickly flowed from these openings likely helped to create a series of ravines between the mountain and a volcanic plateau, dubbed Tarso Ahon, which is partly visible in the top left of the photo.

These ravines are very narrow and deep, meaning they are near-permanently cast in shadow and much cooler than their surroundings. As a result, they can often hold liquid water, despite the Tibesti Massif receiving as little as 0.8 inches (20 millimeters) of rain a year. Two of the largest canyons — which are 2,000 feet (600 m) and 700 feet (250 m) deep, respectively — contain permanent waterways that flow east and west of the volcano, according to the Earth Observatory.

Emi Koussi's slopes are covered with dry "stream channels," which were carved out by millennia of rain flowing down its flanks. Current rainfall patterns would struggle to create such structures. However, thousands of years ago, during the mid-Holocene, the average rainfall was at least 10 times greater, according to a 2025 study that compared the ancient lakes of Era Kohor and Trou au Natron. (The Holocene is the current geological epoch, which began about 11,700 years ago, at the end of the last ice age.)

This is not the first time that astronauts have gazed down upon Emi Koussi. In fact, the volcano was one of the first geological formations photographed from space, when the crew of NASA's Apollo 7 mission snapped the imposing peak in October 1968.

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This eye-catching astronaut photo shows the point where an ancient Patagonian lake has been split by a peculiar land bridge, creating two contrastingly colored bodies of water.

Lake Pueyrredón (on the left in the photo) is the Argentine half of a roughly 40-mile-long (65 kilometers) glacial lake, which stretches across the country's border with Chile in Patagonia — a region in South America that is well known for its diverse range of geographic features, including mountains, fjords, deserts and rainforests. The Chilean half of the lake is known as Lake Cochrane (not shown in this image). Both halves hold crystal-clear water that is up to 1,600 feet (500 meters) deep, giving Pueyrredón a deep blue hue when viewed from above.

Thousands of years ago, a thick sediment barrier formed across the southern section of Lake Pueyrredón, creating a new body of water known as Lake Posadas. This smaller body, which is roughly 5 miles (8 km) long, has a lighter, teal color due to its shallow water and a large influx of sediment from a nearby river, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Other rivers from nearby hills have previously dumped large quantities of sediment along the western shore of Lake Pueyrredón (bottom of the photo), creating a trio of fan-shaped landforms, known as deltas, that increase in size from north to south (left to right in the photo).

Wind-driven currents and waves have pushed some of this sediment from the outer edges of the two smaller deltas, creating long, thin strips of land, known as sandspits, pointing down-current.

The strip of land separating Pueyrredón and Posadas looks similar to the sandspits. However, it is most likely a moraine — a barrier of sediment and larger rocks that formed along the edge of a hefty iceberg or long-lost glacier, according to the Earth Observatory.

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to spot a narrow airstrip on the smallest delta (running almost parallel with its sandspit). While the area is largely uninhabited, it is popular with tourists, who travel to the lakes to camp, hike, fish and kayak, according to a local travel site.

Lake Posadas is also home to a unique island with a massive rocky arch (see below) that is also popular with tourists.

The two lakes in the astronaut photo sit within a large valley, which was carved by a massive ice sheet that once covered the area. The last remnants of this ice sheet are located in northern Patagonia, around 20 miles (30 km) west of Lake Cochrane, and have also been snapped from space by astronauts.

Patagonia is home to dozens of similar valleys and fjords that were carved out by the same massive ice slab. Around 210 miles (340 km) southwest of Pueyrredón and Posadas, a trio of ravines converge to create a rare configuration where a lake, river and glacier "touch" each other at a single point.

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This iconic photo, captured by an American astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS), shows a lengthy trail of thick smoke pouring across New York City in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. A quarter of a century later, the image is as haunting as ever.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners and crashed two of them into the twin towers — a pair of 110-story skyscrapers at the heart of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The impact of these collisions, which occurred roughly 17 minutes apart, eventually caused both buildings to collapse.

Shortly after the second tower was hit, the third hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia. Another attack — likely intended for Washington, D.C. — was thwarted when the passengers of a fourth plane fought back against their hijackers, causing the aircraft to crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, 2,977 people were killed across the different attacks, according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

NASA astronaut and ISS commander Frank Culbertson — the only American not on Earth at the time of the attacks — passed over New York City shortly after being told about what was happening back home. He photographed the thick plume of smoke blowing away from Manhattan, at an altitude of roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

If you look closely, you may be able to see what Culbertson described as an "odd bloom" around the base of the column of smoke rising from the towers. This is likely a sign that the image was captured "around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower," Culbertson said.

Culbertson wrote several letters in the days following the attacks, sharing his unique perspective of the events. "It's horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point," Culbertson wrote on Sept. 13. "The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche."

While in space, Culbertson learned that the pilot of the plane that was later hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon was his former flight school classmate Charles "Chic" Burlingame. When the ISS later passed over the Pentagon, the astronauts could see the large gash in the side of the building where the third plane had crashed. "Tears don't flow the same in space," Culbertson wrote while discussing his friend.

In 2017, Culbertson revealed that there was another striking thing he and the rest of his crew noticed in the wake of the attacks, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. "One of the most startling effects was that within about two orbits, all of the contrails that are normally crisscrossing the United States had disappeared because they had grounded all the airplanes," he said.

However, there was one exception. The astronauts noticed a single contrail moving eastward across the Midwest. "That was Air Force One headed back to D.C. with President Bush," Culbertson said. It was a "very sobering" sight, he added.

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This striking satellite snap shows a series of ghostly green lakes that merged into a single murky entity after several years of unusual weather in the Australian outback.

The entwined lakes are located in Barkly Tableland, an area within Australia's Northern Territory, which lies between the states of Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. The largest section of the conglomerate is Tarrabool Lake (on the left side of the photo), which stretches around 55 miles (90 kilometers) across at its widest point. It is dark green due to the dense vegetation and algae in the water.

The smaller half of the merged lakes (on the right side of the image) is made up of three lakes: Lake Sylvester, Lake Corella and Lake Deburgh. This section has a paler and chalkier hue due to high levels of suspended sediment. This is likely because the lakes have overflowed and mixed together, whipping up the dust and topsoil that once surrounded them. (Several other, smaller lakes of various sizes and shades of green can also be seen throughout the image.)

All of these lakes are ephemeral, meaning they have no constant inflow or outflow of water, much like most of Australia's other lakes. As a result, they almost completely dry out during prolonged periods of sunny weather, as high temperatures cause the water inside them to evaporate, and then reappear as heavy rainfall refills the basins.

However, across the two years prior to this image, there was so much rain that the lakes never dried out. Instead, they continued to grow year over year, as you can see from additional satellite imagery (see below), which shows the same area between 2022 and 2024.

The Northern Territory's rainy season lasts between October and April. Both the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 rainy seasons, which preceded the 2024 satellite photos, were ranked among the top 10 wettest since 1990, according to NASA's Earth Observatory, which released these images.

Although this is extreme, it is not that surprising, considering that annual rainfall in the Barkly Tableland rose by around 14% between 1989 and 2018, according to a report from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. This is likely due to the effects of human-caused climate change.

On top of the general increase in rainfall, Tropical Cyclone Megan dumped a massive amount of rain on the region in March 2024. The resulting flash flooding was so great that fish were seen swimming across a nearby road, Australia's ABC News previously reported.

In the winter, Tarrabool Lake and Lake Sylvester are important breeding sites for birds, including the straw-necked ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis) and the Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus), and BirdLife International lists both lakes as important bird areas. At its fullest, Tarrabool Lake also floods the surrounding Eva Downs Swamp system, creating Australia's largest wooded swamp.

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This eye-catching astronaut snap shows a rare phenomenon known as a "sunglint," which transformed a Pacific island into a pseudo-magnifying glass with a shining silver lens.

The uniquely shaped landmass is Rennell Island (also known as Mugaba or Mu Nggava), one of the southernmost of the Solomon Islands — an archipelago nation of nearly 1,000 islands, atolls and reefs that lies between Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. It is up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) long and 8 miles (13 km) across at its widest point.

At the southeastern end of the island (right side of this photo) lies Lake Tegano (also known as Lake Te Nggano), a roughly 60-square-mile (155 square kilometers) body of brackish water, which is surrounded by a jagged ring of coral topped with dense forest. It is the largest lake on any Pacific island, according to Britannica.

In this photo, sunlight reflects off the surface of both the Pacific Ocean and Lake Tegano directly into the astronaut's camera, making the water appear metallic. This sunglint effect is the strongest on the lake's left side and a horseshoe-shaped bay on the island's bottom edge, because these areas are most sheltered from the wind and therefore have the stillest and most reflective surfaces, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Shadows from clouds are peppered across the sea's silver surface, adding an element of depth to the scene.

Sunglints are useful to scientists because they can help reveal hidden oceanographic features, such as subsurface currents, oil slicks and internal waves, which look like marks on a mirror when this phenomenon is ongoing. Sunglints can also occur on land when sunlight reflects off rivers or illuminates large lakes.

However, the reflected sunlight can obscure parts of aerial images, making them a nuisance in certain tasks, such as hurricane tracking. As a result, sunglints are digitally removed from most satellite images, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Rennell Island is an atoll, meaning it is built on top of the remains of an ancient coral reef, most likely left behind when another island sank into the sea long ago. Its highest point sits around 500 feet (150 meters) above the ocean surface, making it the tallest atoll in the world, according to Britannica.

The landmass is surrounded by a fringing coral reef, which can usually be seen in aerial photos as a light-blue or turquoise band around the atoll's edge. However, because of the sunglint, the reefs have disappeared from view in this image. Similarly, Lake Tegano has several small islands that can't be seen here due to the reflected sunlight.

The region surrounding Lake Tegano is a biodiversity hotspot and has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area, dubbed East Rennell, is home to more than 20 endemic bird species, as well as the Crocker's sea snake (Laticauda crockeri), which is vulnerable to extinction, according to the Earth Observatory.

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This picturesque satellite snap shows a "street" of swirling clouds alongside a giant, multicolor plume in the waters between three countries in Asia.

The swirling clouds, known as a Kármán vortex street or von Kármán vortices, were carved out by winds that whipped around a 6,400-foot-tall (1,950 meters) shield volcano, known as Hallasan, on South Korea's oval-shaped Jeju Island. The lofty peak sits in the East China Sea around 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the Korean Peninsula (top right of the photo) and between China's Jiangsu province (on the left) and Japan's Kyushu island (on the right).

When the winds are just right — between 11 and 34 mph (18 and 55 km/h) — air streams around the elevated peak, creating counterrotating vortices on the leeward side that can sculpt nearby clouds into the swirling patterns we see in this image, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The three largest swirls collectively stretch roughly 230 miles (370 km) from end to end.

The photo also reveals a thick curtain of brownish sediment stretching beneath the waves along China's eastern coastline, including off Shanghai (located around halfway along the landmass in the image). Most of this sediment was discharged by the Yangtze River, the third-longest waterway on Earth, and similar scenes are visible from space for most of the year.

However, a more distinct plume of yellow and green sediment extends up to 270 miles (430 km) from the coast, appearing to almost touch the von Kármán vortices.

The elongated, pale plume is likely the result of increased turbulence in the Yangtze ‪—‬ caused by high rainfall ‪—‬ coupled with stronger seasonal currents and vertical ocean mixing in the winter, according to the Earth Observatory.

It is not unusual to see von Kármán vortices swirling in the cloudy skies near islands with large peaks, such as Mexico's Guadalupe Island or Spain's Canary Islands. Similarly, large sediment plumes are often photographed by satellites. However, it is much rarer to see such oceanographic and atmospheric phenomena occur side by side.

Jeju Island was created by a submarine volcanic eruption around 2 million years ago and has been inhabited by the Indigenous Jeju people for at least 8,000 years. A 2025 study found that people on the island today have unique genetic mutations leftover from this group, which may help the local Jeju Haenyeo ("women of the sea") free dive for food in deep and cold waters without specialized equipment.

Hallasan (also known as Mount Halla) is the tallest mountain in Korea. It is technically an active volcano, although it has not erupted since A.D. 1007, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program. It is renowned for its extensive system of subsurface lava tubes, which are among the "finest" in the world, according to UNESCO.

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This dramatic astronaut photo shows a highly active stratovolcano in Tanzania that was recently adorned with a striking white "crown" of ash. The explosive volcano produces a rare type of lava that is unusually cool, uniquely colored and the fastest-flowing on Earth.

The volcano is officially named Ol Doinyo Lengai and stands up to 9,718 feet (2,692 meters) above the grassy plains of the Arusha region of northern Tanzania. The local Maasai people call the towering peak the "Mountain of God," because they believe it is the residence of the supreme creator god Ngai (also known as Engai or Enkai), according to the book "Sacred Mountains of the World" (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Ol Doinyo Lengai is one of Africa's most active volcanoes; it has been erupting on and off for the past 15,000 years. It alternates between effusive eruptions, where lava seeps out of its vents, and sporadic explosive outbursts, which can drastically alter its appearance. Its most recent eruption, which is effusive, has been going on since April 2017, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

The sacred mountain produces a rare type of lava that consists of natrocarbonatite rock, which is rich in sodium, potassium and calcium carbonate but low in silica. As a result, it is much cooler than most other lava, dipping to temperatures below 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius). It also has an unusually low viscosity, which makes it "some of the fastest-flowing lava in the world," according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

When it solidifies, this unusually runny lava turns surprisingly pale, due to chemical reactions with rainwater and moisture in the air. In this image, you can see several lightly colored rivers of rock snaking down the volcano's flank. The youngest of these lava flows was created during an eruption in 1998.

For most of the past century, Ol Doinyo Lengai's summit consisted of a bowl-like depression that gradually filled with lava. But between 2007 and 2008, a series of major explosive eruptions birthed a 330-foot-tall (100 m) ash cone that now looms over the summit's center.

This explosive event has transformed the volcano's appearance when viewed from space, additional photos from the Earth Observatory show. In the featured image, a dark spot of fresh lava can be seen in the center of the cone, making it look like a crown.

Ol Doinyo Lengai is located in the East African Rift System, a roughly 2,000-mile long (3,500 kilometers) area surrounding a divergent fault line where the African Plate is splitting into the Somali and Nubian plates.

This region has been tectonically active for more than 25 million years and has created some of the continent's most interesting topographic features, including Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, which are located on each side of Ol Doinyo Lengai, according to the Earth Observatory.

The godly mountain is around 10 miles (16 km) south of Lake Natron, a red salt lake that's famed for its large flamingo populations. The geographical features are often photographed alongside one another.

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This eye-catching astronaut photo shows the fractured surface of the world's highest frozen lake lurking in the lofty climbs of the Tibetan Plateau. The smooth, white line where the ice meets the water closely follows a disputed border between China and India.

The elevated lake, known as Pangong Lake or Pangong Tso, sits at an altitude of 13,862 feet (4,225 meters), according to NASA's Earth Observatory. It is long and thin, stretching 83 miles (134 kilometers) across Ladakh, part of the Kashmir region administered by India; and Tibet, an autonomous region of China.

This photo shows a roughly 9.5-mile-long (15 km) section of the river, located around a third of the way along its length from west to east. This is also where the most widely accepted border between Ladakh (on the left of the photo) and Tibet (right side of the photo) lies. However, the exact position of the divide, commonly known as the Line of Actual Control, is poorly defined and has shifted in recent decades, according to The New York Times.

Pangong Lake is endorheic, meaning it has no outflow, and the only way water can escape is via evaporation. As a result, the lake's waters have built up an unusually high concentration of salt over thousands of years. This would usually prevent it from freezing. However, the temperature in the region can drop to minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 25 degrees Celsius), according to a local travel site, which is cold enough for the salty water to freeze over.

It is unclear why the lake's ice is fracturing in the photo. Normally, the entire body of water is completely frozen in January, when this photo was taken in 2024.

Although Pangong Lake has no major outflow, it is connected to several inflowing rivers, including one on the bottom left of this image. The river's delta has largely frozen over (visible as the large, white patch on land), but you can still see a small plume of water entering the river.

On the opposite bank of the delta, there is a beach littered with several striations parallel to the water. These are ancient shorelines left over from when the lake had a higher water level, according to the Earth Observatory.

Pangong Lake was likely once part of the Indus River, which stretches nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) across South and Central Asia. However, it was likely cut off from the waterway millions of years ago as the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collided and the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas formed.

Disputed border

The Line of Actual Control was first established in 1959 but was largely set in its current position in 1962 after the Sino-Indian War. Although the countries have technically been at peace ever since, frequent and occasionally deadly skirmishes have broken out along the border, including on the shores of Pangong Lake, according to the BBC.

Nonetheless, the lake frequently draws tourists from both China and India, particularly bird-watchers, who travel there to see the large groups of bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) and Brahminy ducks (Tadorna ferruginea, also called ruddy shelducks) that breed there, according to the Earth Observatory.

On the Ladakh side of Pangong Lake, extreme-sports enthusiasts run long distances across the lake's ice. In February 2023, dozens of runners gathered there to participate in the highest-altitude frozen lake half-marathon ever recorded, according to Guinness World Records.

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This striking satellite photo shows a multicolor "fan" of folded rocks sculpted by a longtime collision between two of Earth's tectonic plates.

The geological feature, known as an imbricate fan, is located around 3 miles (5 kilometers) east of the town of Murgha Kibzai in Pakistan's Balochistan province. The photographed section of folded rocks measures around 9 miles (15 km) across, but the fan stretches up to 55 miles (89 km) from end to end, well beyond the area in this image.

The dramatic structure sits at an altitude of around 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) in the Sulaiman Range, a series of mountains that covers around 2,500 square miles (6,500 square kilometers) of Pakistan and Afghanistan. ("Sulaiman" means "of Solomon," in reference to the biblical figure King Solomon, and the range's largest peak is Takht-e-Sulaiman, which translates to "Throne of Solomon.")

This is one of several unique features that emerged along the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, which have been colliding for more than 60 million years. At one point during this tectonic tug-of-war, the two plates became somewhat intertwined, allowing the fan to take shape, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

"As India moved northward, it began to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, wrenching the northwestern part of the Indian plate backwards into part of the Eurasian plate," Earth Observatory representatives wrote. "The countervailing forces put the rocks of the Sulaiman Range in a unique compressional vice, causing many of its faults to curve and stretch in convoluted ways."

The fan is made up of alternating layers of sandstone, which appear dark in the image, and limestone, which has a much lighter hue. These sedimentary rocks were formed by "thrust faults" that shot upward from the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian plates and became entangled as the boundary moved back and forth.

The satellite image is false-color, meaning it includes wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not normally visible to humans. This helps to accentuate the differences between the two rock types, although they can also be easily distinguished with the naked eye. Pockets of vegetation appear in red throughout the image.

The photo is a small part of a larger, wide-field image (see above), which showcases several other intriguing geological features across the Sulaiman Range in false color.

Continental collision

The collision between the Eurasian and Indian plates became inevitable around 80 million years ago, when dinosaurs still ruled Earth, according to the Earth Observatory. At this point, the pair became locked on a collision course, with each plate moving more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) per year — around twice the speed of the fastest tectonic plates today.

Around 60 million years ago, the plates slowly slammed together. Normally, this would cause the smallest tectonic plate to sink below the other. However, the two plates' massive size meant neither receded. Instead, the continental crust along the boundary grew thicker, and the ground buckled, folded and pushed upward.

This process created not only the Sulaiman Range but also the Karakoram (a huge mountain range that spans the borders of China, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan) and the Himalayas — the two tallest mountain ranges on Earth, according to the Earth Observatory.

This collision continued at full speed for around 30 million years, before eventually slowing down. However, the two plates are still technically colliding today, making the region a major earthquake hotspot.

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This eye-catching astronaut photo shows a cloud of sediment swirling into a giant, milky-green vortex in one of Europe's largest lakes.

Lake Skadar (also known as Shkodër, Shkodra or Scutari) is the largest lake in Southern Europe, with a surface area between 140 and 200 square miles (360 to 520 square kilometers), depending on the time of year. It is situated on the border between Montenegro, which surrounds the western half of the lake (left in the photo), and Albania, which encircles the lake's eastern shore. The body of water is split 65% to 35% in Montenegro's favor.

The lake's main water source is the Morača River, to the northwest, and its biggest outlets are the Bojana and Drin rivers, which start at the lake's easternmost point and eventually drain into the Adriatic Sea, which is partially visible in the bottom left of the photo. Skadar's southern shore is also hugged by a lofty mountain range, known as the Dinaric Alps.

During late winter and early spring, the lake's water level rises, and it usually fills with a milky-green substance that often gets whipped into a vortex by a combination of wind-driven surface currents and the natural flow of water between the lake's major inlets and outlets.

The swirling material looks very similar to blooming algae, but it is actually made of sediments — predominantly limestone and dolomite — that wash into the lake from the Dinaric Alps and other nearby mountains as the snow melts.

Skadar is a karst lake, meaning it was once a cave system that flooded and eventually collapsed, likely because the caves were made from the same easily erodible rocks that now swirl on the lake's surface, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The lake is a "cryptodepression" because most of the lake's floor is below sea level.

The lake originally formed during the Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago to the present), according to the International Lake Environment Committee Foundation's World Lake Database. It is home to several small islands, some of which can be seen in the photo along the lake's southern shore. These include Beška, which is home to a pair of 600-year-old churches, and Grmožur, where the remains of a 19th-century fortification loom above the lake's surface.

The shipwreck of a paddle steamboat, named Skanderbeg, lies along the lake's western shore. Local partisans sank the vessel in 1942 after Italian soldiers commandeered it during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II. When the lake's water levels are at their lowest, part of the shipwreck rises above the surface.

Skadar Lake is a biodiversity hotspot and has protected wildlife status on both sides of the Montenegro-Albania border. It is a particularly important site for birds; more than 280 avian species call it home, including the Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus) and several endemic species, according to BirdLife International.

The lake also hosts around 50 freshwater snail species ‪—‬ more than any other lake on Earth, according to a 2013 study.

This stunning astronaut photo shows the last time one of NASA's iconic space shuttles photobombed astronauts' view of Earth as the spacecraft docked with the ISS.

NASA's Space Shuttle Program included five plane-like spacecraft — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — which collectively completed 135 missions between 1981 and 2011, racking up more than 32,000 hours in space. During that time, they helped to construct the ISS and, later, ferry astronauts to and from the station. The space shuttles also helped to deploy and maintain several other important spacecraft, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

The last space shuttle to fly was Atlantis, which successfully completed 33 missions (the second-highest total, behind Discovery).

This photo shows Atlantis approaching the ISS for the last time as it passed over the distinctive turquoise waters of the Bahamas. The space shuttle's bay doors are open, exposing its cargo area. This was standard procedure for all space shuttles once they reached low Earth orbit because it prevented the spacecraft's radiators from overheating.

The open doors also enabled the shuttle's docking mechanism, located within its cargo bay, to attach to the ISS, thus creating a pressurized seal so that astronauts could move between the two spacecraft.

Atlantis' final flight began on July 8, 2011, when it launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida vertically strapped to a massive fuel tank and a pair of rocket boosters. It returned to Earth on July 21, gliding down to land onto a runway at the launch site. (The spacecraft is now on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.)

In addition to helping construct the ISS, NASA's space shuttles visited Russia's Mir space station, serviced Hubble, and deployed both the Magellan probe to Venus and the Galileo probe to Jupiter. In total, the space shuttle orbited Earth 4,848 times, traveling nearly 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) — more than 525 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Astronaut photos of the space shuttles were popular because they offered "punctuated snapshots of distinct places on Earth" that were "framed by a human eye," NASA representatives wrote in 2011. "These images speak to people."

While the Space Shuttle Program achieved a lot during its 30-year history, it famously suffered two tragedies: the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia disasters, which killed all crewmembers on board.

NASA eventually canceled the program in 2011, citing the high cost of maintaining the aging spacecraft and a reduced need for the vehicles after the completion of the ISS the same year. To this day, the space shuttles remain the only winged spacecraft to carry humans into space.

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This ethereal satellite snap shows beautiful, "painting-like" folds within an ancient underwater structure in the Bahamas.

The Great Bahama Bank (GBB) is a massive submerged platform stretching around 330 miles (530 kilometers) across a shallow ocean channel between Andros Island and the Exuma islands, according to Britannica. The crescent-shaped bank surrounds a darkly colored ocean drop-off known as "The Tongue of the Ocean," which plunges to depths of 6,500 feet (2,000 meters), according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The photographed section of the GBB is around 23 miles (37 km) across and features a series of submerged sandbanks — most of which are covered with dense seagrass beds — that lie between 7 and 40 feet (2 to 12 m) below the ocean's surface.

The varying water depth and seagrass concentration cause multiple hues of green and blue to shine across the sandbanks, which have been carved into smooth, folding ribbons by ocean currents over thousands of years.

"The varying colors and curves remind us of graceful strokes on a painting," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

This section of the GBB was first photographed in 2001 by the Landsat 7 satellite and has often appeared on lists of the most iconic aerial images of our planet.

"There are many nice seagrass and sand patterns worldwide, but none like this anywhere on Earth," Serge Andréfouet, an oceanographer at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development who first shared the 2001 image, told the Earth Observatory. "I am not surprised it is still a favorite, especially for people who see it for the first time."

The sandbanks are like giant underwater dunes carved out by ocean currents.

"Tides and ocean currents in the Bahamas sculpted the sand and seaweed beds into these multicolored, fluted patterns in much the same way that winds sculpted the vast sand dunes in the Sahara Desert," Earth Observatory representatives wrote in 2001.

The GBB lies atop a roughly 3-mile-thick (5 km) bed of limestone dating to the age of the dinosaurs, more than 65 million years ago. This hefty mass, made up of the remains of long-dead coral reefs, is so large that Earth's crust directly below the GBB has "sagged under the weight," according to the University of Texas at Austin's Marine Science Institute.

Before the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, this limestone slab had risen to more than 400 feet (120 m) above sea level and only resubmerged as global sea levels rose due to the melting of glaciers, according to the Marine Science Institute.

The Bahamas has more than 3,000 islands and smaller cays and is home to several other intriguing oceanographic features, including deep tidal channels off the coast of Great Exuma Island (which once harbored famous pirate ships) and a series of aurora-like sandbanks that appear to shine along the nation's northernmost islands.

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This eye-catching satellite snap shows off a sprawling mass of petrified lava surrounding the jet-black slopes of a potentially dangerous volcano in the heart of the Sahara. A smaller volcanic "skull" lurks near the shadowy peak's base.

Toussidé (also known as Tarso Toussidé) is a "potentially active" stratovolcano located within the Tibesti Mountains, which cover around 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) of northern Chad and southern Libya. The dark peak stands 10,712 feet (3,265 meters) above sea level, making it the second-tallest mountain in the Tibesti region.

The name Toussidé roughly translates to "which killed the local people with fire" in the language of the nearby Indigenous people, hinting at a destructive and deadly history. However, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program, there is no evidence that the volcano has erupted during the Holocene — the current geological epoch, which began around 12,000 years ago. It is unclear if it has actually killed anyone.

The dark blob surrounding the volcano is known as a massif. It is made up of layers of overlapping magmatic rock left by multiple ancient lava flows that effusively erupted, or slowly poured from, the volcano's summit.

The shadowy structure, which is up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) across at its widest point, stands out against the surrounding sand-covered plateau, which has been carved into a network of crisscrossing canyons by eons of wind blasting, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Just southeast of the massif (in the upper right of the photo), there is a small, white circle containing several dark patches. This is Trou au Natron — a roughly 3,300-foot-deep (1,000 m) volcanic crater, or caldera, which looks eerily like a giant skull when viewed directly from above.

The cranium-like caldera likely formed during an explosive eruption more than 120,000 years ago. It was once filled with a giant salt lake that was home to ancient algae and other microorganisms. When the lake dried out, around the start of the Holocene, the receding water left behind a thick layer of white salt surrounding a pair of eyelike volcanic cones.

Toussidé is one of the youngest mountains in the Tibesti range, which formed by similar effusive eruptions long before the stratovolcano was born. The entire region likely once matched the massif's dark hue before being relentlessly bombarded by sand and wind. In another 100,000 years or so, the massif may blend in with the surrounding plateau, according to the Earth Observatory.

While the shadowy volcano has remained dormant for several millennia, it occasionally puffs out steam from small vents, or fumaroles, near its summit, suggesting that it is still technically active, according to the European Space Agency. However, geologists have not properly assessed its eruptive potential.

This eye-catching satellite snap shows off a "bull's-eye-like" set of concentric cloud rings that formed above an erupting volcano on La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands.

The eruption, the first on La Palma in 50 years, began Sept. 19, 2021, when a fissure opened up on the western flank of Cumbre Vieja — a volcanic ridge that runs through the southern half of the island — and spewed massive lava fountains into the air. The violent outburst created a 660-foot-tall (200 meters) vent, dubbed Tajogaite, which continued to slowly pump out lava until Dec. 13, 2021.

The molten rock flowed into the Atlantic Ocean in a giant "river of fire" that destroyed a town and unleashed deadly gases that are still causing issues for locals today, Live Science previously reported.

The concentric cloud rings in this image are made up of steam, smoke and ash ‪—‬ known as an eruption plume ‪—‬ that rose above Tajogaite for weeks.

Normally, such a plume would continue to climb into the cold air of the stratosphere — the second layer of the atmosphere, which extends from around 6 to 31 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) above Earth's surface. However, when this image was captured, a rare "temperature inversion" created a layer of elevated warm air that acted as a lid, preventing the plume from rising and forcing it to spread outward, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The trapped plume created concentric rings that formed from the natural ebb and flow in the intensity of volcanic activity. This pulse in the emissions given off by the volcano is visible in time-lapse footage captured by the Izaña Atmospheric Research Center on Tenerife, another Canary Island.

The official name for this type of concentric cloud formation is a "gravity wave," according to the National Weather Service. However, the formation has nothing to do with gravity, and it's completely separate from the ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.

"River of fire"

During the 85-day eruption, around 7.1 billion cubic feet (200 million cubic meters) of lava — reaching temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius) — seeped from the ground.

This molten rock traveled around 4 miles (6.4 kilometers), destroying around 3,000 buildings in the town of Todoque, before falling into the Atlantic Ocean in a fiery waterfall. The estimated damage exceeded 700 million euros ($780 million), according to the Spanish newspaper El País.

Where lava fell into the sea, around 4.6 million square feet (430,000 square meters) of new land was created. The reaction between the molten rock and the water also released high levels of volcanic gases, such as sulfur dioxide and hydrogen cyanide.

At least one person, a 72-year-old man who returned to his home prematurely, is believed to have died from inhaling these toxic fumes, according to AFP. Thousands of wild and agricultural animals are also thought to have been killed by the gases.

The damage was "truly terrible," Marie Edmonds, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science at an event on La Palma in April 2025. "Most shocking to me is the closeness of the vent to the communities," she added when describing what it was like to visit the area. "It must have been absolutely terrifying to see the eruption so close."

This awesome astronaut photo shows the striking symmetry of "twin" stratovolcanoes at the heart of Java, Indonesia. The parallel peaks are an eye-catching reminder of the region's extreme tectonic activity.

Mount Sundoro (also known as Sindoro or Sindara) on the left of the image, reaches a maximum height of 10,331 feet (3,149 meters). Its partner, Mount Sumbing, sits to the southeast (on the right of the image) and is slightly taller, at 11,056 feet (3,370 m) above sea level.

Both are considered active. Although Sumbing has not erupted since 1730, Sundoro has blown its top more recently, in 1971, and has experienced seismic activity as recently as 2012, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

The volcanoes' peaks are just 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) apart. A raised ridge with a major highway runs perpendicularly between them.

Each volcano also has a smaller, secondary cone on its flank left over from previous eruptions (to the upper left of Sundoro and the upper right of Sumbing in the image), and their orientations make the volcanoes look like mirror images of each other.

The slopes of both cones are covered with rings of dark-green forest that sharply terminate at their bases. The volcanic soils surrounding the mountains are excellent for growing crops such as rice, corn, coffee and sugarcane, which has led to the deforestation of their surroundings, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

This matching coloration accentuates the similarities between the pair, especially when viewed from above.

One of the few differences between Sundoro and Sumbing is that the latter volcano has a sizable crater at its summit, which was carved out by the 1730 eruption. As a result, the larger volcano appears to have a darker point at its top.

The volcanoes are commonly referred to as "twins," due to their near-identical profiles. However, local people often call them "husband and wife," according to a local travel site. In this narrative, Sumbing is considered the husband due to its slight height advantage and "more masculine" profile.

Sundoro and Sumbing are part of the wider Dieng Volcanic Complex, which consists of around 20 volcanic cones stretching across central Java. Indonesia is also positioned along the "Ring of Fire," a roughly horseshoe-shaped arc of volcanoes that runs along a series of tectonic plate boundaries encircling the Pacific Ocean.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of significant eruptions in Indonesia, including a pair of violent blasts at Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, on Flores Island, in 2024 and 2025. As of June 2026, there are seven ongoing eruptions in Indonesia — the most of any nation.

This dramatic astronaut photo shows a trio of colorful lakes straddling the border between Nevada and California. The three lakes ‪—‬ which vary in shape, size and salinity ‪—‬ also occupy very different biomes.

The most famous lake in the trio, Lake Tahoe (on the left), is the largest alpine lake in the U.S.. It covers an area of around 192 square miles (497 square kilometers) and sits at about 6,223 feet (1,897 meters) above sea level in the Sierra Nevada, which stretches across the bottom of the image and is covered in snow.

The other two bodies, Walker Lake (upper right) and Mono Lake (lower right), are positioned southeast of Lake Tahoe and each have have a maximum width of around 13 miles (21kilometers). (Another major body of water, Pyramid Lake, is located out of the shot to the northeast of Lake Tahoe, while two much smaller lakes sit between the three larger lakes.)

The border between California and Nevada runs directly through the middle of Lake Tahoe and continues to bisect the space between Walker Lake, which is in Nevada, and Mono Lake, which is in California.

While Tahoe is located in the lofty climbs of the Sierra Nevada and is subsequently exposed to very wet and cold conditions, Walker and Mono are situated within the Great Basin desert. This flatter region — which also covers parts of Utah, Idaho and Oregon — has a drastically different environment because it sits within the mountain range's "rain shadow" and, therefore, receives very little precipitation, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The other stark difference between the lakes is their respective colors, which become even more apparent when viewed from above.

Lake Tahoe is the second-deepest lake in the U.S., with a maximum depth of 1,645 feet (501 m). As a result, it has a rich, bright-blue hue. It has constant subsurface currents that prevent it from freezing over in the winter, so it looks the same year-round.

Walker Lake is endorheic, which means it does not have a proper inlet or outlet and instead rises and falls via rainfall and evaporation. Over the past few centuries, the rate of evaporation has outpaced precipitation, which has made the lake extremely salty, or hypersaline. This altered chemistry, combined with the lake's shallower waters and the presence of various microbes, gives the lake a greener hue when viewed from above.

Mono Lake is also endorheic. It has seen an even sharper drop-off in recent years, as evidenced by a series of "bathtub rings" left over from when the lake had much higher water levels. It's home to salt-tolerant photosynthetic algae, which are preyed upon by brine shrimp (Artemia). Drops in the shrimp population in the colder winter months allow the algae to bloom, causing Mono Lake to turn bright green. If you look closely at the image of the lake, you can see a large swirl that represents the blooming algae getting trapped within wind-driven surface currents.

Due to the sharp rises in their salinity, Walker and Mono lakes have almost no remaining fish populations. This has allowed algae to take a greater hold in both lakes, according to the Mono Lake Committee.

Mono Lake also made headlines in 2010 when NASA scientists found a species of bacteria living there that could feed on the high levels of arsenic in its waters — a first in microbe biology, which could "impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," researchers claimed. However, this paper was eventually retracted in 2025 after experts noticed flaws in its data.

Although it is rare to see many visually contrasting lakes in close proximity, similar scenes have been snapped from space. For example, in Africa's Great Rift Valley, there is a striking trio of blue, green and yellow lakes. Colorful collections of lakes can also be found in Crimea's "putrid sea" and around the Etosha Pan in Namibia.

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In this striking satellite photo, rusty-orange water appears to bleed across the salty white floor of a high-altitude lagoon in Bolivia.

Laguna Colorada ("Red Lagoon" in Spanish) is a hypersaline, or extremely salty, lake in Bolivia's Altiplano — the world's second-highest plateau, which stretches across the Andes. It sits around 14,100 feet (4,300 meters) above sea level.

The lagoon was once much larger, which is evident thanks to the striations of an ancient shoreline visible along its right edge. As it eventually dried out, an uneven layer of borax salt (sodium tetraborate) was left behind. These salty crystals often rise above the water level, creating bright-white islands and causing the "bleeding" effect when viewed from above.

The water's reddish hues come from algae, predominantly Dunaliella salina. This salt-loving species is rich in red pigments known as carotenoids, and is responsible for creating similarly reddish waters across the globe.

The lake is often much redder. However, the water's hue changes based on its temperature and salinity, which determine the growth of various alga species, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. At some points in the year, the color is greenish.

Laguna Colorada has been listed as a "wetland of international importance" since 1990 under the Ramsar Convention. Its surroundings are home to a number of animals, including mountain cats, foxes and llamas. However, its most famous residents are flamingos.

At least three species of the bright-pink birds — the Andean flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus), the Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis) and the James's flamingo (Phoenicoparrus jamesi) — frequent the lagoon and get their vibrant coloration from eating the carotenoid-rich algae. (Flamingos are born gray; their iconic hue comes from their diet.)

The lagoon sometimes draws comparisons to Tanzania's Lake Natron, which often has blood-red water and is home to 2.5 million of the pink birds — the largest flamingo colony on Earth.

Laguna Colorada is sandwiched between two volcanoes, just out of view at the top and bottom of this photo.

Several other colorful salt lakes are nearby, including Laguna Verde ("Green Lagoon) and Laguna Blanca ("White Lagoon"), which sit side by side around 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Laguna Colorada.

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This shimmering satellite image shows tendrils of gold surrounding Ghana's sacred "lake of souls," which was carved out by a devastating asteroid strike around 1 million years ago.

Lake Bosumtwi (also spelled Bosomtwe) spans 19 square miles (19 square kilometers) ‪—‬ a little smaller than Manhattan ‪—‬ and is located just to the southeast of Ghana's second-largest city, Kumasi (partially visible in the top left of the photo). The roughly circular body of water, which is up to 240 feet (70 meters) deep, is the country's only natural lake.

To the Indigenous Asante people, the lake is a sacred site. According to their mythology, a hunter named Akora Bompe chased a wounded antelope into a small magical pond, causing the small body of water to rapidly swell into the lake we see today. It is also considered a "place where souls bid farewell to Earth before entering the afterlife," according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

In reality, the lake actually formed around 1 million years ago, when a roughly 3,300-foot-wide (1 km) meteor slammed into our planet, creating "arguably the best-preserved complex young impact structure known on Earth," according to the International Commission on Geoheritage.

The catastrophic collision likely triggered "a blinding flash of light and an immense fireball [that] would have incinerated life for dozens of kilometers," Marian Selorm Sapah, a senior lecturer in the University of Ghana's Department of Earth Science, told the Earth Observatory. If the same event occurred today, it would likely obliterate the city of Kumasi, she added.

Remote sensing analysis has revealed that the material blasted out of the impact settled in a raised, lobed pattern known as a "rampart" crater. This suggests the area was covered in a layer of groundwater when the collision occurred, according to the Earth Observatory.

Rampart craters are rare on Earth but are more common throughout the solar system, including on Mars, as well as on smaller bodies, such as Ganymede, Dione, Tethys and Charon. As a result, studying Lake Bosumtwi could provide insight into how these extraterrestrial craters formed, Sapah said.

The impact also fractured Earth's crust and allowed mineral-rich magma to rise to Earth's surface, forming shallow veins of gold and other valuable elements that have been mined for generations. This activity has resulted in the golden flecks and lines visible in this satellite image.

The rate of gold mining has accelerated in recent years due to advances in technology. Another satellite photo taken in 2024 (see below) shows much more visible gold, which has been exposed by this increased activity. (The lake also appears green in the newer photo due to higher concentrations of phytoplankton in its waters.)

"The stark visual evidence of anthropogenic [human-caused] change juxtaposed with a million-year-old geological landmark is striking," Sapah said.

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This eye-catching astronaut photo shows a series of bright-blue "potash ponds" near the dark-green bends of the Colorado River as the waterway winds through the rocky plateaus of southeast Utah.

The multicolored stripes are solar evaporation ponds, which are located around 8 miles (13 kilometers) southwest of the town of Moab in the heart of the Colorado Plateau — a roughly 130,000-square-mile (340,000 square kilometers) elevated region spanning parts of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

The photo shows 23 ponds, grouped into two larger structures, which cover a total area of around 400 acres (160 hectares), according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The ponds are used to refine potassium chloride, also known as potash, which is mined at a site just out of view (below the ponds in the image).

The potash is mined by pumping boiling water into the ground to create a mineral-rich brine that is extracted and transported to solar evaporation ponds, where it is reduced into tiny, brown crystals. The distinct colors of the ponds signify that they are at different points in the evaporation process.

When the ponds are initially filled, workers add a dark-blue dye to the water to help it absorb more sunlight, thereby speeding up the rate of evaporation. However, this dye also evaporates, so as the water level drops, the intensity of the blue decreases. Eventually, the ponds turn white and then tan when a dried layer of potash is all that remains.

Potassium sulfide is mainly used as an agricultural fertilizer but has a variety of other industrial applications, including in the production of medicines, cement, fire extinguishers, textiles and beer.

The term "potash" is derived from "pot ash," which is the name of a preindustrial fertilizer made by combining wood ash with water and evaporating the mixture in a pot. The element potassium was subsequently named after pot ash when it was discovered to be the secret main ingredient in this mixture.

In addition to the usual environmental effects of mining, which include habitat destruction and noise pollution, potash mining produces high levels of waste products, such as sodium chloride and clay, which can cause damage to the environment.

This salty sludge is often piled into large mounds or dumped into tailing pools. A 2017 study found that the sludge is sometimes washed into nearby waterways. This can "significantly alter biological communities" and trigger harmful algal blooms. However, it is currently unclear what, if any, effect potash mining is having on the Colorado River.

The Colorado River is the sixth-longest river in the U.S. and stretches around 1,450 miles (2,330 km) from its source in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado to the Gulf of California in northern Mexico. The lengthy waterway, which played a role in forming the Grand Canyon, appears green from above due to high levels of suspended sediment, much like in the aptly named Green River — a tributary of the Colorado River that also runs through Utah.

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This striking satellite snap shows a powerful hurricane bearing down on Hawaii as a shimmering silver streak obscures the tropical islands from view.

The swirling cyclone, dubbed Hurricane Kiko, was a Category 4 storm that formed in the eastern Pacific on Aug. 31, 2025. Three days later, on Sept. 3, it had fully strengthened, reaching peak wind speeds of around 145 mph (233 km/h), and made headlines after researchers realized it was on a collision course with Hawaii.

Luckily, the hurricane weakened to a Category 2 storm before reaching Hawaii and diverted to pass mostly north of the islands, before finally fading away on Sept. 10, just off the coast of Honolulu, according to Zoom Earth. These changes, which were brought about after the hurricane hit a patch of cold water, meant that residents experienced some heavy rainfall and high winds but were otherwise unaffected.

The satellite photo was snapped Sept. 7, when Kiko was around 600 miles (965 kilometers) east of Hilo on Hawaii's Big Island, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. At this point, the cyclone was approximately 470 miles (750 km) across at its widest point.

You can just about make out the outlines of the cloud-covered Hawaiian Islands within the thick band of silver stretching across the left side of the image. This shimmering streak is the result of a phenomenon known as a sunglint.

Sunglints are visible only from space. A sunglint occurs when sunlight bounces off the surface of the ocean or another large body of water directly into the observer's line of sight. (This is similar to how sunlight reflects off water during a sunset.)

The phenomenon gives water a metallic, mirror-like appearance, which can create stunning spectacles, such as reflected cloud murals and visually transformed rivers.

What's more, sunglints can partially obscure satellite imagery, thus interfering with efforts to monitor the climate, according to NASA. On the other hand, sunglints can help researchers by revealing hidden oceanographic phenomena, such as subsurface currents and "internal waves."

Researchers predict that, on average, hurricanes and other tropical storms will become more frequent and powerful in the coming decades as a result of human-caused climate change. In fact, there have already been signs of this happening in recent years, including storms such as Hurricane Melissa, which killed 95 people as it ripped through Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica in October 2025.

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Contrasting satellite snaps show the drastic transformation of an emoji-like lake in Canada that completely drained after its bank suddenly collapsed. Experts think a multitude of factors led to the rare event.

Lake Rouge (known locally as Lac Rouge) was a roughly 1-square-mile (3 square kilometers) lake in southwest Quebec. It was positioned next to a pair of smaller, unnamed lakes, each around 1,600 feet (500 meters) across at its widest point. When viewed from above, the three bodies of water looked surprisingly like a shocked face, with the smaller lakes being the eyes above a wide-open mouth.

In May 2025, members of the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi — a nearby community of Indigenous people who used the lake for hunting, fishing and trapping — discovered that the lake had been totally emptied, after they found a thick coating of mud and dead fish spread across a nearby logging road, according to a statement released by the group.

After members of the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi traced the muddy trail back to its source, it became clear that Lake Rouge's eastern bank had collapsed in a landslide-like event, causing its entire water supply to spill outward in a violent torrent known as an "outburst flood." (The two smaller lakes next to Lake Rouge remained unaffected.)

"It looks like a natural disaster," Irene Neeposh, chief of Waswanipi, told CBC News at the time. "We've never seen anything like this."

Satellite imagery shows that the lake's sediment-laden water traveled around 6 miles (10 kilometers) before reaching the larger Doda Lake, which has a surface area of around 29 square miles (75 square km). Rather than flowing along any existing pathways, the water "punched through a row of smaller lakes and ponds" to reach its final destination, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The sediment in the water quickly spread throughout Doda Lake, turning the larger body of water into a massive, muddy puddle. The nearby Father Lake (also called Priest Lake), which is around the same size as Doda Lake, was not impacted by the sediment, despite being adjacent to the polluted waterway.

While the exact timing of the outburst flood is unknown, additional satellite imagery revealed it must have occurred between April 29 and May 14, 2025, Live Science's sister site Space.com previously reported.

Researchers told The Guardian that it is extremely rare to see an outburst flood in anything other than glacial lakes or human-made reservoirs, which have banks made of ice or concrete that can suddenly crack and break apart.

Initially, experts assumed the lake bank's collapse was simply due to that winter's large snowfall, which led to an unusually high water level. However, it soon became clear that other factors were at play.

First, the area surrounding Lake Rouge was significantly impacted by major wildfires in 2019 and again in 2023, which was one of the worst years for wildfires in the country's history. This unprecedented wildfire season removed vegetation from the area, making the topsoil less stable. What's more, scorched earth does not readily absorb water, so it could not reduce the pressure applied to the banks as it otherwise would.

Second, the forests around the lake have been largely cleared by logging activities in recent decades, which has led to snow melting faster. This means bodies like Lake Rogue fill up much more quickly than they otherwise would.

Parts of Canada's landscape, including Quebec, are also less resilient to environmental stressors because they were largely covered by a massive ice sheet until around 20,000 years ago.

"It's a very young landscape that's evolving very fast," François-Nicolas Robinne, a forest hydrologist with the Government of Alberta, told The Guardian. If the lake's collapse hadn't happened in 2025, it may have occurred the next year or "a century from now," but it would have happened eventually, he added.

Some researchers, including Robinne, likened the outburst flood to a 2024 incident in British Columbia's Chilcotin River, where a landslide completely dammed the waterway and briefly trapped a population of endangered salmon on the wrong side.

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This beautiful satellite snap captured a series of "brushstroke-like patterns" that emerged in the mouth of an Indonesian river. The striking striations were triggered by a particularly high tide following a full "Strawberry Moon."

The Rokan River is a roughly 220-mile-long (350 kilometers) waterway on Indonesia's Sumatra island. The landmass covers around 170,000 square miles (440,000 square kilometers) in the Indian Ocean, making it the sixth-largest island on Earth.

The river runs from the Barisan Mountains in Sumatra's west to the island's north coast, where it drains into the Strait of Malacca. Here, the river morphs into a brackish estuary that flows on each side of Halang Island (photographed).

The Rokan River often has a yellow hue due to high levels of sand and silt in its waters. The sediment gets dragged up from the river's floor, partially due to the constant rising and falling of the tide, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

In this image, the tide is on its way out, which causes the sediment to be slowly dragged out to sea. When viewed from above, these "brushstroke-like patterns" transform the river into what looks like an abstract painting, Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

When the photo was taken, the high tide was at its peak ‪—‬ up to 16 feet (5 meters) higher than low tide. The water was especially high because it was the day after the full "Strawberry Moon" rose in the sky, according to the Earth Observatory. (June's full moon is nicknamed the Strawberry Moon because it coincides with the strawberry harvesting season in the Northern Hemisphere, not because of its color.)

The tidal range is greatest when there is a full moon because the sun and the moon are aligned in a straight line, so they gravitationally push and pull Earth's oceans in sync. This is known as a "spring tide," but it happens throughout the year.

In addition to having a significant tidal range, the Rokan River is home to a regular tidal bore — a powerful surge of water that rushes upstream like a giant wave during high tides. This rare phenomenon occurs only in estuaries with a narrow mouth and a high tidal range.

A 2022 study revealed that the surge is responsible for transporting large amounts of sediment back up the river. If a bore occurred before the satellite photo was taken (which may or may not have happened), it could have stirred up some of the sediment streaks visible in the image.

All of this tidal action can have a significant impact on the estuary itself. A 2016 study compared satellite images of the estuary between 2000 and 2014, and found that the shoreline along the north of Halang Island (which clearly extends beyond the small landmass in the image) is growing at an average rate of 220 feet (67 m) per year.

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This dazzling satellite photo shows a glowing ring of plankton surrounding a remote group of New Zealand islands. The illuminated landmasses are hotspots for deadly whale stranding events, which are tied to the same underwater structure that birthed this spectacular bloom.

The gleaming ring encircles the Chatham Islands — a group of 10 islands in the Pacific Ocean around 520 miles (840 kilometers) west of Christchurch, on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The largest of those islands, Chatham Island and Pitt Island, are approximately 36 miles (58 km) and 9 miles (15 km) across, respectively. (The other landmasses are much smaller and are not clearly visible in the image.)

The Chatham Islands are surrounded by the Chatham Rise — a shallow underwater plateau that extends up to 900 miles (1,450 km) from the South Island's east coast. This hidden structure acts like a giant ramp that funnels cold, nutrient-rich waters to the ocean's surface. In the summer, warmer seasonal currents mix with this nutrient-rich water, providing the perfect conditions for algae to bloom.

The circular bloom in the photo was one of the largest in recent decades. It consists mostly of coccolithophores, a group of photosynthetic plankton, or "phytoplankton," that convert sunlight into energy and surround themselves with intricate calcium carbonate armor.

The satellite image was captured with a special near-infrared filter, which likely enhanced the algae's vivid hues. However, the blooming microorganisms would have been clearly visible to the naked eye from space, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Phytoplankton are the base of the pelagic (open-water) food web, similar to plants' role in terrestrial environments. As a result, the Chatham Islands are marine biodiversity hotspots that are home to various animals, including penguins, albatrosses, seals and sea lions, as well as commercially important populations of cod and lobsters.

At least 25 species of whales and dolphins, or cetaceans, are also drawn to the islands to feed, including orcas (Orcinus orca), sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) and pilot whales (Globicephala), according to New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC). However, this is not always a good thing for the visitors.

Large groups of cetaceans often get disoriented in the shallow waters and can end up accidentally swimming too close to shore and getting trapped as the tide goes out, which is often fatal without human intervention.

Chatham Island has experienced multiple strandings over the past few years, including an event in October 2022 when nearly 500 pilot whales were euthanized on Chatham Island after washing up over the space of around four days, according to a DOC report. In 1918, more than 1,000 pilot whales are also believed to have died there after washing ashore, which remains the most deadly whale stranding event in recorded history. (Pilot whales are particularly prone to stranding because they are highly social, so an entire pod can be dragged into danger by a single injured or disoriented individual.)

Cetaceans are not the only creatures that have met an untimely end on the Chatham Islands. The archipelago was previously home to at least eight endemic bird species that have since gone extinct, including the Chatham penguin (Eudyptes warhami). Most of these species disappeared between 150 and 200 years ago due to the island's first human settlers, who arrived there from Polynesia in the 15th century.

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This striking satellite photo shows the point where a tiny lake bisects the snowy rim of a massive ancient glacier on a Canadian island in the Arctic Circle.

The small body of water, dubbed Gee Lake, is around 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) across at its widest point. It is located along the edge of the southeast limb of the Barnes Ice Cap — a roughly 2,300-square-mile (6,000 square kilometers), "bowling-pin-shaped" glacier situated at the center of Baffin Island in Canada's Nunavut territory.

In this image, captured in early September 2010, both the lake and the ice cap are still snow-free, except for the ice cap's edge, due to warmer summer temperatures. As a result, we can see the dark gray of the glacier, which is caused by the buildup of dust between layers of ice "spanning time periods that dwarf a human life," according to NASA's Earth Observatory. (In the winter, the glacier, lake and surrounding landscape are blanketed with snow.)

The exposed ice, which is up to 1,600 feet (500 meters) thick, is marked with striations that look like the "growth lines on a clamshell" running east to west, Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

These grooves are ridges cut by meltwater streams running off the glacier, Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Earth Observatory. And while they give the impression that the ice is undulating, the surface of the glacier is surprisingly flat and smooth, he added.

Ice core samples collected from the glacier reveal that parts of the Barnes Ice Cap date back around 20,000 years, making it Canada's oldest known ice, according to a 2008 study. It is also the last remaining fragment of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of Canada and the northern U.S. as far back as 100,000 years ago and helped to carve out the Great Lakes.

By around 20,000 years ago, as the last ice age began to thaw, most of the Laurentide Ice Sheet had melted away. But what was left slowly migrated north, toward what is now Baffin Island, where it eventually disappeared into the sea (aside from the Barnes Ice Cap). A 2009 study revealed that most of the melting ice passed through the Kangiqtualuk Uqquqti Fjord (previously known as the Sam Ford Fjord), around 70 miles (110 km) northeast of Gee Lake.

Although most of the Laurentide Ice Sheet is long gone, we can still see its impacts today. Recent research has shown that its meltwater has significantly altered ocean currents, while the geological "rebound" caused by the vanished weight that once pressed down on North America may be causing some major U.S. cities to sink and also affecting parts of Greenland.

Like most other glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctica, the Barnes Ice Cap is shrinking as a result of rising temperatures from human-caused climate change.

Although its current rate of ice loss is minimal — just a few meters of retreat per year — this will increase sharply as temperatures rise further. A 2017 study predicts that most of the glacier will "likely disappear in the next 300 years."

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This striking satellite snap shows a verdant mass of algae and other aquatic plants sprawling across the surface of a recreational reservoir in South Africa. This frequent phenomenon releases toxic chemicals into the water and gives rise to hidden "dead zones" that can cause widespread fish fatalities.

The reservoir is located at the Hartbeespoort Dam, which was constructed in the 1920s around 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Pretoria. The artificial water source lies just south of the Magaliesberg mountains, which are partially visible along the top of the image, and is fed by the Crocodile River (spelled Krokodilrivier in Afrikaans), which cuts through the nearby peaks. In addition to providing fresh water to nearby cities and farms, it is used for recreational activities, including fishing and water sports.

Most large bodies of water experience seasonal blooms, where photosynthetic algae, or cyanobacteria, rapidly multiply and spread across their surfaces due to changes in weather or nutrient inflow. However, the Hartbeespoort reservoir is in a constant state of "hypereutrophication," which means it has an overabundance of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. As a result, the blooms there are much more frequent and intense, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

"On clear days … satellite images often reveal a reservoir with shades of deep blue interrupted by drifting patches of vivid green," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

However, it is not just algae that bloom across the reservoir's surface. The verdant masses also include aquatic plants, including water hyacinths (Pontederia crassipes) and Salvinia minima, both of which are invasive species and grow across the reservoir's surface in large, intertwined mats.

Eutrophication occurs when too many nutrients are added to a body of water, often due to human influences, and can lead to unnaturally large algal blooms. "It's like having a garden," Bridget Seegers, an oceanographer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland who leads NASA's Cyanobacteria Assessment Network, told the Earth Observatory. "If you add a lot of nutrients, you're going to have a lot of growth." (Hypereutrophication is a more extreme version of this phenomenon.)

However, unlike in a garden, you cannot simply cut back the blooms you don't want, and the consequences of not being able to contain the plant life are much more severe. For example, some of the algae within the Hartbeespoort reservoir can produce toxins that must be filtered out of the water for it to be safe to drink.

However, the bigger issue is that the excessive growth of plant life on the surface sucks up the oxygen from the water below, making it toxic to fish that need to extract oxygen from water via their gills to breathe. These areas of oxygen-poor water are often dubbed "dead zones," and when the blooms spread widely, there are few safe spaces for the fish to go.

In April 2023, a lack of oxygen in part of the reservoir was linked to a mass die-off of fish, including hundreds of large carp, according to a government report. And in November 2025, another bloom likely triggered a similar die-off and left fish "gasping for air" at the reservoir's surface, according to South Africa-based News 24. These blooms eventually disappear, but the next one is rarely far behind.

The Hartbeespoort reservoir has experienced near-continuous hypereutrophication since the 1970s, excluding a brief period in the 1990s when a successful bioremediation program was introduced but then was quickly scrapped due to high costs. As a result, algae have been blooming constantly, spreading and dying across the reservoir's surface for decades.

You can see this in the animation below, which was made from aerial images collected by the Landsat 8, Landsat 9 and Sentinel satellites between June 2022 and July 2023.

A 2023 study that analyzed data from the previous four decades found that the main culprit was the Crocodile River, which has become extremely polluted with runoff from farms and golf courses that use nutrient-rich fertilizers.

In addition to threatening wildlife, the toxins in the water have been known to cause rashes on water-sports enthusiasts and sicken dogs.

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This intriguing astronaut photo shows a series of rocky rings and their distinctive "hat" towering above a dune sea in the Sahara. The concentric, shadow-filled walls are home to ancient artworks and, occasionally, herds of cattle.

The colossal structure, known as Mount Arkanu (sometimes spelled Arkenu), is a massif, or group of mountains, that stands up to 2,600 feet (800 meters) above the surrounding sands and stretches up to 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) across at its widest point. The peaks are located in southeast Libya, near the border with Egypt.

Due to the mountains' shape, scientists previously assumed that the massif was an ancient impact crater that formed when a giant space rock slammed into the northeast Sahara. But more recent research has shown that the rocky rings are not of extraterrestrial origin.

Instead, the mountains were created when "magma [repeatedly] rose toward the surface and intruded into the surrounding rock," according to NASA's Earth Observatory. This formation process likely ended hundreds of millions of years ago but has not been properly dated.

"Repeated intrusion events produced a series of overlapping rings, their centers roughly aligned toward the southwest," Earth Observatory representatives wrote. "The resulting ring complex — composed of igneous basalt and granite — is bordered to the north by a hat-shaped formation made of sandstone, limestone, and quartz layers."

The massif has two large gaps in its outermost southern wall (bottom right in the photo). These have been slowly carved out by a pair of wadis, or ghost rivers, which sporadically fill with water when it rains. The phantom waterways can also be seen snaking through the dark plateau surrounding the complex.

This region of the Sahara is hyperarid; it gets only 1 to 5 millimeters (0.04 to 0.2 inches) of rain each year, according to the Earth Observatory. However, the massif receives between 5 and 10 mm (0.2 to 0.4 inches) of rain annually, due to a phenomenon known as "orographic precipitation," which occurs when clouds form over raised landforms, according to the U.K. Met Office.

As a result of this additional water, the rings are partially filled with grasses, bushes and trees that the shadows from the towering peaks shelter from the desert's scorching temperatures.

Cattle herding

The combination of shade, vegetation and occasional water has historically made the massif a popular destination for nomads traversing the surrounding dune seas.

Another massif, Mount Awaynat (sometimes spelled Uwaynat or Uweinat), is located roughly 12 miles (20 km) southeast and has provided similar benefits to desert wanderers for generations.

Some of the canyon-like walls of both Mount Arkanu and Mount Awaynat are covered with rock carvings, or petroglyphs, that were first discovered in 2003. These ancient artworks depict human fugures, along with cattle and other tethered animals, such as giraffes.

Early-20th-century explorers noted that members of the local bedouin tribe trekked their cattle herds to the massifs and left them inside to graze for up to three months at a time — and blocked up the holes created by the wadis to stop the animals from wandering off.

The cattle carvings within both structures suggest that this practice has been going on for thousands of years.

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This striking satellite photo shows a bright plume of swirling marine mud that was whipped up off the coast of Florida following a blast of cold air from the Arctic, which brought severe winter weather to large parts of the U.S. earlier this year.

In late January, an extreme cold front descended across the eastern half of North America as the polar vortex — the ring of cold air that circles in the atmosphere above the Arctic — stretched southward, just as it did approximately a year previously.

This phenomenon, known as an Arctic blast, brought temperatures as low as minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42 degrees Celsius) to parts of the Midwest, according to the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. It also sparked fears that trees might start exploding.

In addition to dumping snow as far south as Georgia, this weather front also helped create a giant underwater plume in the West Florida Shelf — a large area of shallow water created by a submerged continental shelf that extends off Florida's southwest coast.

The plume, which consists mostly of calcium carbonate scattered across the seafloor, stretched up to 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast at its widest point, which extended outward from Key West (partly visible as three large landmasses in the right of the photo), according to NASA's Earth Observatory. It also stretched around the same distance from north to south (beyond the upper border of the photo).

Calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) is an inorganic chemical compound. While it is commonly found in rocks, such as limestone, the swirls in the photo are made of biological CaCO₃ — created by corals, algae and crustaceans — that builds up on the seafloor as the creatures die and fall to the ocean floor. The West Florida Shelf collects high levels of this material due to its shallow waters and is often described as a "carbonate ramp" as a result.

When the cold Arctic air descended on North America, it triggered strong winds across the shelf's surface, which created currents that dragged the calcium carbonate and other seafloor sediments closer to the surface, James Acker, a chemical oceanographer at the University of South Florida and NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center, told the Earth Observatory.

Similar plumes have appeared in this area after hurricanes, which can also whip up seafloor sediments. However, such plumes are often less intricate than the one in this image because the disturbance to the ocean floor is much more violent.

Recent research has suggested that Arctic blasts like the one that painted this plume could become more common in the future as a result of human-caused climate change, which has made it more likely that the polar vortex will stretch southward. Therefore, we may see many more seascapes like this in the coming decades.

Hidden details

The plume is most highly concentrated in a line stretching directly between Key West and Dry Tortugas National Park, which comprises seven small islands (visible in the left of the photos).

Faint sediment swirls can also be seen farther from the coast. They include a rare pair of counter-rotating eddies, also called a "hammerhead eddy" (visible in the upper left of the image), which was created when the cold waters of the plume collided with the warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Earth Observatory.

This swirling sediment is also partly tied to the cold weather. "The cold air cools off the shallow water on the banks and makes it denser than the surrounding warmer open ocean water," Acker said. When this dense water sinks and flows offshore with the tides, it can carry some of the sediment toward the shelf’s edge, he added.

In the opposite direction, a thin trail of sediment can be seen snaking beneath the plume and terminating in a distinctive curl. This "loop current" formed when sediment-filled water spurted into the deeper waters of the Atlantic Ocean through hidden channels in the shelf's floor.

The last time such a visible loop current was seen in this area was in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which bashed into Florida in 2022 after pummeling Cuba, according to the Earth Observatory.

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This intriguing astronaut photo shows off the contrasting colors of five ephemeral lakes that emerged around the edges of a giant salt pan after a major flooding event in southwest Africa.

The kaleidoscopic scene occurred in the northwest corner of the Etosha Pan — Africa's largest salt flat, or mineral pan, which covers around 1,800 square miles (4,730 square kilometers) in northern Namibia. The name Etosha roughly translates to "Great White Place" in an Indigenous Namibian language, and the ghostly expanse is located roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the country's capital, Windhoek.

The satellite photo shows a snaking pair of ephemeral rivers that drain into the Etosha Pan: the Ekuma River (left) and the Oshigambo River (right). These winding waterways are surrounded by roughly a dozen bowl-like depressions that occasionally fill with water when the rivers sporadically flood their banks.

When the image was taken, both rivers had recently flooded due to heavy rains in the region, causing around half of these pale depressions to fill with water. The rest of the lakes remained empty and are the same pale hue as the rest of the Etosha Pan.

The contrasting colors of the newly filled lakes — which include yellow, green, brown, red and pink — are likely the result of different species of algae that bloomed within their shallow waters, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. (For scale, the green lake is around 4 miles (6.5 km) long at its widest point.)

The Etosha Pan likely formed around 10 million years ago and has been a freshwater lake for most of that time. But around 16,000 years ago, toward the end of the last ice age, tectonic activity diverted one of the major rivers that fed into the lake, causing it to dry out.

As the water slowly evaporated, it left behind a thick layer of minerals, which covered the lake bed. Most of the pan's surface is covered by honeycomb-like hexagonal structures that are common among salt flats across the globe.

During flooding events, a thin layer of water can briefly lie within the pan, transforming it back into a shallow lake. However, this rarely happens, even when its rivers flood.

The last time a majority of the pan flooded was in 2006, which was also captured from space by ISS astronauts.

Wildlife haven

Despite the Etosha Pan's extreme dryness and salinity, which make it largely inhospitable to life, the area surrounding the ancient lake is covered with rich grassland and woodland.

This diverse ecosystem is protected as part of Etosha National Park, which covers 8,900 square miles (23,000 square km), and is home to a variety of animals, including lions, giraffes, zebras, hyenas, impalas, elephants, rhinos, springboks, wildebeests and ostriches, according to iNaturalist.

The salt flats themselves are also an important breeding site for flamingos, and up to 1 million of the pink birds congregate there at a time, according to the Etosha National Park website.

If you look closely at the astronaut photo, you can see the park's northern fence running across the image from left to right — just above the green lake and bisecting the red and pink lakes. This 10-foot-tall (3 meters) barrier stops the park's animals from wandering outside the woodlands where they could be targeted by poachers, according to the Earth Observatory.

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This striking satellite snap shows a massive letter Y lurking in the heart of a recently transformed Chinese desert. The unusual shape is made up of a rocky ridge and a winding, gemstone-filled river and is also home to an important eighth-century fort.

The intersecting lines are located in the middle of the Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklimakan and Takla Makan), which covers an area of 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers) in the Tarim Basin of China's Xinjiang region.

The desert was previously considered a "biological void" — meaning it was almost completely devoid of life — due to its high temperatures and aridity. However, an ecological engineering project known as the Great Green Wall has planted more than 66 billion trees along the desert's northern edge since 1974, which has transformed it into a carbon sink that soaks up large amounts of carbon dioxide, recent research revealed.

The Y shape comprises two parts: the Hotan River, which stretches about 180 miles (290 kilometers) across the desert from south to north; and Marzatagh, a "wall-like" mountain ridge that stands around 600 feet (180 meters) above the surrounding sands and extends up to 90 miles (145 km) to the northwest, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The Hotan River (sometimes called the Khotan River) is fed by glacial meltwater from the Kunlun Mountains south of Taklamakan and appears green due to vegetation that grows between its braided streams. Its waters are rich in both white and green nephrite, which are prized types of jade.

Marztagh is split into seams of reddish iron-rich rocks and paler sandstone, earning it the name Hongbaishan, meaning "red-white mountain" in Chinese. It also acts as a natural barrier for sand that gets blown against the rocky wall, creating a sea of rippling, crescent-shaped "barchan" dunes along its northern edge.

The confluence of drinking water, valuable gemstones and shelter from the elements made this location an important stop on the Silk Road — a massive network of trade routes running from east to west across Asia from the second century to the fifteenth century.

The point where the two features meet is home to the crumbled remains of a military fort, which likely dates to the eighth century.

Crumbling fort

The fortification, dubbed Mazar Tagh, was built on a hill at the intersection of the Y shape by the Tibetan Empire, which existed between A.D. 618 and 842 and covered most of the Tibetan Plateau, including parts of modern-day China, India and Afghanistan.

The site was first excavated in 1907 by Hungarian-British archaeologist Aurel Stein, who uncovered more than 1,500 document fragments, transcribed on both wood and paper, according to the The International Dunhuang Programme. These texts were written in multiple languages — including Khotanese, Uyghur and Sogdian — and document the soldiers' experiences.

Other artifacts — including arrows, sheathes, shoes, dice, a comb and a pen — were also found at the site and are currently stored at the British Museum. However, the most impressive find was arguably a portrait of a "begging monk" painted on a wooden board, likely by a soldier. The monk was probably on a pilgrimage to an ancient Buddhist shrine that was built on the same hill.

Today, the hill is also home to an Islamic shrine.

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This striking satellite photo shows off the contrasting colors at the point where three rivers converge in Guyana. The multicolor waterways result from the country's unique geology, as well as an increasingly disruptive human-caused factor.

In the Indigenous Arawak language, Guyana means "land of many waters," which is an apt name, given that the country is home to 10 major rivers and dozens of smaller waterways, despite being around the size of South Carolina, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

This unique hydrology is linked to the Guiana Shield, a 1.7 billion-year-old geologic feature that covers Guyana as well as parts of Venezuela, Brazil, Suriname and French Guiana. The shield contains hard crystalline bedrock made up of rocks such as gneiss and granite, meaning it does not easily erode except from flowing water, which has carved out many routes through the region.

In this photo, two smaller rivers — the Cuyuni River (left) and the Mazaruni River (center left) — come together shortly before merging with the Essequibo River (center right) to form one of Guyana's largest waterways.

The town of Bartica, which is home to around 15,000 people, is located on the piece of land that juts into the water at the point of the secondary merger. From there, the enlarged Essequibo River flows northward for around 30 miles (50 kilometers), before draining into the Atlantic Ocean.

Prior to merging, the Mazaruni and Essequibo are dark brown, which is likely the result of tannins — chemicals released by rotting vegetation that stain waterways via a process similar to tea brewing. The Cuyuni is light brown due to high levels of suspended sediment in its water, according to the Earth Observatory.

When the rivers meet, the lighter and darker waters do not readily mix because of the differences in density caused by varying levels of sediment.

While the presence of tannins is a natural phenomenon triggered by flooding, the high levels of sediment are the result of mining waste that is dumped in the Mazaruni.

"This image is from a wet time of year when all three rivers were running high and carrying a lot of sediment," Evan Dethier, a hydrologist at Colby College in Maine, told the Earth Observatory. "But the Cuyuni is the clear outlier, which we can attribute to the intensity of mining upstream."

Guyana is a hotspot for mining, largely because of its vast deposits of gold, diamonds and bauxite, as well as lithium, copper and nickel, which are also linked to the Guiana Shield, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The country's mining industry began in ernest in the mid-2000s, and since then, the concentration of sediment in the Cuyuni has likely increased tenfold, Dethier said. Similar changes have been documented in rivers across the planet.

A 2022 study led by Dethier revealed that sediment concendrations in rivers in the Southern Hemisphere has risen by around 40%, largely due to mining and deforestation. However, the opposite is true in the Northern Hemisphere due to the construction of large-scale dams, which have blocked sediment flow by around half.

The changes in global sediment flow also may be affecting the marine environment, because the sediment input in most of the world's oceans has changed drastically, the study warned ‪—‬ but it is still too soon to see what sort of long-term effect this may have.

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This striking satellite photo shows a recently uncovered meteor crater in China that is likely the youngest impact structure on Earth and the largest in its wider age bracket. The horseshoe-shaped depression is also only the second impact crater ever discovered in the country.

The Yilan crater is an incomplete, nearly circular impact crater located in the Lesser Xing'an (also spelled Khingan) mountain range of China's Heilongjiang province, around 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) northwest of the town of Yilan. It is approximately 1.15 miles (1.85 km) across at its widest point, and its ringed walls reach up to 500 feet (150 meters) above the crater floor.

Chinese researchers discovered that the incomplete ring was an impact crater in mid-2021, around three months before this photo was taken. Until then, it had largely gone unnoticed because it is surrounded by thick forests. Although locals knew about the structure, they called it Quanshan, meaning "circular mountain ridge," which suggests they had no idea of its extraterrestrial origins.

However, when the research team dug up to 1,440 feet (440 m) beneath the crater's floor, they found "shocked quartz, melted granite, glass containing holes formed by gas bubbles, and tear-drop-shaped glass fragments" — all clear signs that a sizable space rock had slammed down there, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Carbon dating revealed that the crater formed sometime between 46,000 and 53,000 years ago, meaning it could be the youngest of the roughly 200 major impact craters on Earth.

Until this discovery, the most widely accepted "youngest major crater" on Earth was Barringer Crater (also known as Meteor Crater) in Arizona, which dates back 50,000 years, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Given the uncertainty around the Yilan crater's age, researchers cannot be sure that it is younger than Barringer Crater, although it is thought likely.

The Yilan crater is also the largest of any impact crater under 100,000 years old, so it beats another record previously held by Barringer Crater, which is around 0.75 mile (1.2 km) across.

As you can see in the satellite photo, the southern third of the crater's rim is missing. Researchers are unsure exactly when or how this section of the crater's rim disappeared. However, sediment found on the crater's floor hints that there was formerly a lake within the crater, which strongly suggests that the structure was once fully intact, according to the Earth Observatory.

Chinese craters

The Yilan crater is the first impact crater to be discovered in China since the 1.1-mile-wide (1.8 km) Xiuyan crater in Liaoning province, which dates back to between 330,000 and 1.1 million years ago, was confirmed in 2009.

Given how large China is — around the same size as the U.S. by land area — it has long been a mystery as to why more impact craters haven't been found there. However, others have been uncovered following the discovery of the Yilan crater.

In September 2023, scientists discovered a third Chinese crater, around the same size as the Yilan crater. Carved into the summit of a mountain near the North Korean border, the crater dates back at least 150 million years.

Then, in October 2025, scientists confirmed a fourth impact structure, dubbed the Jinlin crater, on a mountain near Zhaoqing in China's Guangdong province. This crater is only around 3,000 feet (900 m) wide and may date to as recently as the current epoch, known as the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago, according to Sci News, although its age is unconfirmed.

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This intriguing astronaut photo reveals the hidden beauty of the expansive Great Dyke of Zimbabwe, a massive seam of ancient magmatic rock that's chock-full of valuable minerals.

The Great Dyke stretches approximately 342 miles (550 kilometers) across central Zimbabwe, from outside the capital city, Harare, in the northeast, to near the country's second-largest city, Bulawayo, in the southwest. It ranges from 2 to 8 miles (3 to 13 km) wide and contains hills that rise up to 1,500 feet (450 meters) above the surrounding plateaus, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Despite its name, the gigantic structure is not actually a dike — a vertical sheet of frozen magma that cuts through existing rock layers. Instead, it is a lopolith, which is similar to a dike but forms parallel to existing rock sheets and is both flatter and more lenticular, or saucer-shaped.

The Great Dyke is thought to be the longest continuous igneous intrusion, or structure of elevated magmatic rock, anywhere on Earth, according to the Zimbabwe Geological Survey.

The astronaut's snap shows the southernmost tip of the structure, around 78 miles (125 km) from Bulawayo. In 1983, astronauts on board the space shuttle Challenger also captured a striking photo of the structure's southern half, and in 2003, NASA's Terra satellite imaged the lopolith's entire length (see below).

Geologists think the lopolith formed around 2.5 billion years ago, when magma from Earth's mantle gradually seeped upward through tectonic plate faults. This means the structure has existed for more than half of Earth's roughly 4.5 billion-year history.

This magma was full of valuable minerals that are normally locked deep below Earth's crust, which has made the area a hotspot for mining. Today, there are at least half a dozen major mines along the lopolith's length, according to Mining Zimbabwe magazine.

The Great Dyke is full of important metals, including gold, nickel, copper, titanium, iron, vanadium and tin, according to the Earth Observatory.

However, it is best known for its expansive platinum deposits, which are collectively the third largest of their kind on Earth, as well as its unusually pure chromite, which contains high levels of chromium — a key component in the production of stainless steel, according to Mining Zimbabwe.

The Great Dyke is also rich in rocks that are used for sculpting, "resulting in an artist's paradise akin to the Greek marble quarries," local artist Michael Nyakusvora wrote on their website.

"The Great Dyke of Zimbabwe is more than a line on a map — it's a lifeline of economic opportunity [and] a geological marvel," according to Mining Zimbabwe.

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This amorous astronaut snap, first released by NASA on Valentine's Day 2025, highlights a pink, heart-shaped salt lake in Argentina.

Salinas Las Barrancas, sometimes known as Laguna de Salinas Chicas, is a shallow salt lake in the lowland plains of Argentina's Buenos Aires province, roughly 33 miles (53 kilometers) west of the port city of Bahía Blanca.

The lake bed is around 6 miles (10 km) across at its widest point and regularly fills with water after heavy rainfall. However, this liquid quickly evaporates due to the region's intense sunlight, exposing crystal-rich salt flats that are mined by local people, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

In this photo, the lake appears to be close to empty because of its lighter-pink hue, which is most likely the result of an imbalance between Dunaliella salina — a species of dark-red algae that thrives in most of Earth's salt lakes — and other microorganisms in the water, according to a 2022 Smithsonian magazine article about similarly colored salt lakes.

"We have rainy seasons, when the salinity levels decrease [because there's more water in the ponds]. When there's less salt, the Dunaliella survives and the ponds look brownish-red," Lilliam Casillas Martinez, a microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, told Smithsonian magazine while explaining the colors of similar salt ponds in Puerto Rico. "During the dry season, it gets really salty. The Dunaliella dies and the archaea and bacteria take over. Then it becomes pink, pink, pink."

Locals mine up to 330,000 U.S. tons (300,000 metric tons) of salt from the flats of Salinas Las Barrancas twice a year, between the region's rainy seasons, according to a 2019 feature on the lake by Argentine news site La Nación. Most of this salt is replenished by the next major rainfall, and experts predict that mining will remain viable there for 5,000 years.

Mining is largely carried out using traditional processes, including scraping salt from the flats' surface with handheld tools. Workers must take precautions to protect their eyes and skin from intense sunlight that reflects off the pure white crystals. "The salt becomes part of your life," local worker Chepo told La Nación (translated from Spanish). "For someone else, it's a hellish place, but for me, the salt flats are my home; you get used to not being able to see."

Salinas Las Barrancas' high salinity means that not much can survive there. However, some salt-resistant vegetation does grow around the lake's edges, according to the Earth Observatory.

It is also home to colorful birds, including vibrant yellow cardinals (Gubernatrix cristata) and bright-pink Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis). These birds feed on tiny crustaceans that are rich in carotenoids — organic pigments synthesized by plants, algae and bacteria.

These specific carotenoids come from the Dunaliella algae, which the tiny crustaceans feed on, and naturally produce both red and yellow pigments. Without these pigments in their diets from birth, both bird species would be different colors; yellow cardinals are naturally red, while flamingos are born grayish-white.

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This trippy satellite snap shows the hidden intricacies of the biomass, or carbon-rich material, surrounding a winding river in Bolivia. The first-of-its-kind image, snapped last year, shows the unique orbital perspective from one of Europe's newest spacecraft.

The striking photo shows a section of land — around 56 miles (90 kilometers) long and 37 (60 km) wide — surrounding the Beni River (or Rio Beni) in northern Bolivia. The convoluted waterway stretches approximately 680 miles (1,095 km) from its origin in the Andes, just north of La Paz, and into Brazil, where it merges with the Amazon River.

The image was snapped by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Biomass satellite, which launched April 29, 2025. This satellite scans Earth's surface using polarized radar, allowing it to detect subtle differences in biomass across the landscape.

In the image, rainforests appear green, grasslands are purple, wetlands are reddish, and the river and nearby lakes appear black. (The photo has also been flipped so that north is to the right of the photo.)

The mission's "first images are nothing short of spectacular — and they're only a mere glimpse of what is still to come," Michael Fehringer, an ESA scientist and Biomass project manager, said in a statement when the image was released.

One key goal of the Biomass satellite is to measure how Earth's carbon-rich areas are shifting in response to human pressures, such as climate change and deforestation.

For example, Bolivia is among the countries hit hardest by deforestation. But it is hard to quantify the scale of this issue using normal satellite photos, where forests, grasslands and wetlands appear to merge (see above).

ESA has since revealed several more stunning images from the Biomass satellite, including snaps of Mount Gamkonora in Indonesia, the Ivindo River in Gabon, the Tibesti Mountains in Chad and the Nimrod Glacier in Antarctica.

The satellite is now fully online and will scan the entirety of Earth's forests every six months.

Biomass's radar technology will also be particularly good at penetrating and assessing ice masses, which will be an important secondary goal of the spacecraft's mission.

On Jan. 26, ESA announced that it is opening up the satellite's dataset to the public, which will allow for more research. This collaborative approach will "unlock vital insights into carbon storage, climate change, and the health of our planet's precious forest ecosystems," Simonetta Cheli, ESA's director of Earth observation programs, said in the statement.

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