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Plume at Mount Bagana, Bouganville Island
Published April 8, 2007
Bouganville Island is geographically part of the Solomon Islands chain to the east of Papua New Guinea. (Politically, the island is part of Papua New Guinea.) Bouganville is typical of many Pacific Rim islands in that volcanism has played a large part in both its geological and recorded history. The island hosts three large volcanoes along its northwest-southeast trending axis: Mount Balbi, Mount Bagana, and the Mount Takuan volcanic complex. Mount Bagana, located near image center in this astronaut photograph, is the only historically active volcano on the island.
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Montevideo, Uruguay
Published April 2, 2007
Reflective roofing materials and dark asphalt streets outline the urban grid pattern of Uruguay’s capital city, Montevideo, in this astronaut photograph. The city may be viewed as a precursor of a global population shift from dominantly rural to urban environments, a shift the United Nations estimates will occur by 2030. Nearly half of Uruguay’s total population now lives in the Montevideo metropolitan area. Located on the southern coastline of Uruguay along the Rio de la Plata, Montevideo Bay provides an important harbor and port facilities for transport of South American agricultural products.
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Guanaja Island, Honduras
Published March 26, 2007
Guanaja Island is located in the western Caribbean, approximately 60 kilometers (about 37 miles) north of mainland Honduras. The island is near the western edge of the Cayman Ridge, a topographic feature made of rock types that indicate ancient volcanic islands, sedimentary layers, and ocean crust. The ridge resulted from tectonic interactions between the North American, South American, and Caribbean Plates. Guanaja and the nearby islands of Roatan and Utila (not shown) are the only portions of the western Cayman Ridge currently exposed above water.
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Caravelas Strandplain, Bahia Province, Brazil
Published March 19, 2007
This astronaut photograph highlights an ancient shoreline, or strandplain, on the coast of Brazil. The image is dominated by numerous fine, parallel lines (trending diagonally from upper left to lower right), each of which is an ancient shoreline made up of sand transported from rivers to the north.
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Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Published March 12, 2007
The port city of Bahía Blanca lies almost 600 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires on the southern rim of the Argentine economic heartland. This small city of 275,000 people is located near the mouth of the Arroyo Naposta.
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Flooding in Somalia
Published March 5, 2007
The Horn of Africa frequently sees heavy precipitation during El Niño periods. In late November 2006, southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia were experiencing severe flooding that displaced hundreds of thousands of people. These two astronaut photographs show the same coastal region in Somalia, south of the capital of Mogadishu, providing a visual contrast between wet and normal conditions.
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Montreal
Published February 26, 2007
The largest city in the Canadian province of Québec and the largest inland port in the world, Montréal takes its name from a distinctive landscape feature at the center of the city. Mont-Royal (“royal mountain” in French) rises to an elevation of 233 meters (about 764 feet) at Colline de la Croix peak.
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Barcelona, Spain
Published February 19, 2007
Barcelona, Spain, occupies a low plateau along the Mediterranean coastal plain. The city is the second largest in Spain (after the capital, Madrid), and it hosts the country’s largest seaport, portions of which are visible in the lower right of the image. This detailed astronaut photograph captures several notable features of the Barcelona urban landscape. The architectural design of the Eixample district (image center) displays a grid pattern distinctive for Barcelona. Built during the 19th and 20th centuries, the district was built with octagonal city blocks—rectangular blocks with the corners cut off. (At the level of detail of this photograph, the blocks appear to be squares.) The original intention was for buildings to occupy only two or three sides of the octagonal blocks, surrounding gardens and open space. While the original street grid pattern remains, today many of the octagonal blocks are completely built up.
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Erg Oriental, Algeria
Published February 12, 2007
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Mumbai, India
Published February 5, 2007
Mumbai is a megacity, one whose population is more than 10 million. More than 21 million people live in the greater Mumbai metropolitan region.
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The Top of the Atmosphere
Published February 2, 2007
Atmospheric gases scatter blue wavelengths of visible light more than other wavelengths, giving the Earth’s visible edge a blue halo. At higher and higher altitudes, the atmosphere becomes so thin that it essentially ceases to exist. Gradually, the atmospheric halo fades into the blackness of space. This astronaut photograph captured on July 20, 2006, shows a nearly translucent moon emerging from behind the halo.
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Pagan Island, Northern Mariana Islands
Published January 29, 2007
Pagan Island (image right) is made up of two volcanoes connected by a narrow isthmus of land. The volcanoes are stratovolcanoes, which are tall, typically cone-shaped structures formed by layers of dense, crystallized lava and less-dense ash and pumice. Mount Pagan, the larger of the two volcanoes, forms the northeastern portion of the island and has been the most active historically.
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