Image Credit: Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
This image of the Earth from space makes an excellent wallpaper for your computer.
Via Flickr
Today is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. The environmentally-themed day was “founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson [of Wisconsin] as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970.” Of course, everyday should be Earth Day, but today represents a special remembrance of where our livelihoods, our goods and services, or our well-being derives. The images below represent a mere sample of Earth’s unique possessions, and these images are a reminder of why it’s important to conserve our one and only home and her unique natural possessions.
Environment-themed art by Tomás Sánchez, Walton Ford, and Alexis Rockman—some of my favorite artists.
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Photo source for attribution here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The authors or licensors of these images do not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.
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A massive iceberg, named B-9B, collided with the Mertz Glacier Tongue in Antarctica to shed another massive iceberg the size of Luxembourg. The image at right shows the Mertz Glacier Tongue and the B-9B iceberg during December 2007 before the collision, and the image below shows the aftermath of the collision.
According to the BBC, the two massive icebergs have changed the geography of the region and may threaten local marine line. More from the European Space Agency:
This animation, made up of eight Envisat radar images, shows the 97-km long B-9B iceberg (right) ramming into the Mertz Glacier Tongue in Eastern Antarctica in early February 2010. The collision caused a chunk of the glacier’s tongue to snap off, giving birth to another iceberg nearly as large as B-9B. The new iceberg, named C-28, is roughly 78-km long and 39-km wide, with a surface area of 2500 sq km (the size of Luxembourg).
Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) acquired these images from 10 February to 4 March in Wide Swath Mode, providing spatial resolution of 150 m. ASAR can pierce through clouds and local darkness and is capable of differentiating between different types of ice.
If the image below isn’t animating, then click on it to see the animated GIF showing the collision in action:
Images via the European Space Agency
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The Lena Delta is the largest wilderness protected area in Russia, and it’s an important ecoregion that provides habitat for numerous species of wildfowl. According to WWF, “The whole of the Lena Delta area has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” The Delta is located in the northeast of Siberia.
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For more Earth from space images, see: QUOTE: “We live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”
On the Net:
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