Start Date: End Date: Published Date Data Date
Galveston, Texas
Published November 27, 2006
Galveston Island has alternately been a home to Native Americans, a base for Mexico’s rebellion against Spain, a pirate kingdom, a sea port, and even the capital of the Republic of Texas. In September 1900, the city was largely destroyed by a powerful hurricane. This storm damage, combined with construction of the Houston Ship Channel and discovery of oil in eastern Texas, shifted the center of trade northwest to Houston. This astronaut photograph shows some of the human impacts in Galveston that are easily observed from the vantage point of low-Earth orbit. The city of Galveston dominates the eastern half of Galveston Island, appearing as the gray-white region at center right. A large seawall along the Gulf of Mexico—shown here along the southern coastline of Galveston Island—protects most of the city. To the west of Galveston, coastal wetlands are largely submerged by regional subsidence—sinking of the land as a result of ground water withdrawal by the petrochemical industry of Houston and Texas City.
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Currituck Sound, North Carolina, USA
Published November 20, 2006
North Carolina’s Outer Banks—known as Pine Island in the area shown in this image—protects a network of interconnected waterways, including Currituck Sound, a shallow, 3-mile-wide water body; the North River; and the well-known Albemarle Sound. Wakes from barges on the Intracoastal Waterway appear on the North River, which provides a connection between the Hampton Roads area to the north and Pamlico Sound to the south.
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Berkeley Pit: Butte, Montana
Published November 13, 2006
Mined for gold, silver, and copper, the region of Butte, Montana, had already earned the nickname of “The Richest Hill on Earth” by the end of the 19th century.
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Haze in the Po River Valley, Italy
Published November 6, 2006
Taken from an oblique angle and looking toward the southwest, this astronaut photograph shows parts of northern Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, the Adriatic Sea, and the Mediterranean. Over part of the Alps, skies are clear, but elsewhere, the view of the land and sea is largely obscured. Bright white clouds cover much of the region, but over northern Italy, the “clouds” are different. There, dingy, gray-blue haze hangs over the Po River Valley.
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Aquaculture in the Nile Delta
Published October 30, 2006
In the last three decades, Egypt has greatly modified a series of lagoons and lakes along the northeast coast of the Nile Delta for the production of fish. Partial sunglint in this astronaut photograph reveals numerous details in one such fishery. Sunglint is light reflected directly back from a surface—usually water—to the viewer (or to a camera or satellite sensor). Waves generated by northwesterly winds (lower left to upper right in this view) have created the frond-like sand spit along the coast (image top). Faint sea swells are visible at image upper left as a pattern of dark and light lines. Dark patches in the center of the image are shadows cast by small clouds, which appear pewter-gray compared to the golden sunglint on the watery surfaces below.
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Volga River Delta
Published October 23, 2006
The Volga River drains much of western Russia’s industrial region as it travels southward to empty into the Caspian Sea. Over thousands of years, the river has built a tremendous delta that forms the northwestern shoreline of the Caspian Sea. The delta channels provide transportation between the heartland of Russia and the oil-rich Caspian Sea. The Volga’s extensive distributaries (branches to the sea) harbor habitat and rich fishing grounds for Russia’s famous beluga sturgeon, the source of beluga caviar. The delta’s wetlands, parts of which are designated as the Astrakhanskiy Biosphere Reserve, are important stopping points and breeding grounds for migrating water birds. This detailed astronaut photograph zooms in on a shipping channel in the western part of the delta.
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Sand Dunes in Har Nuur (Black Lake), Western Mongolia
Published October 16, 2006
Har Nuur (“Black Lake”) is located in western Mongolia’s Valley of Lakes, part of a system of closed basins stretching across central Asia. These basins are the remnants of larger paleolakes (paleo- means “ancient”) that began to shrink approximately five thousand years ago as regional climate became drier. This oblique (looking at an angle) astronaut photograph captures the dynamic nature of the landscape of Har Nuur. The lake is encircled by sand dune fields that encroach on the lower slopes of the Tobhata Mountains to the west and south. Gaps in the mountains have been exploited by sand dunes moving eastward, indicating westerly winds. The most striking example is a series of dunes entering Har Nuur along its southwestern shoreline.
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Munich International Airport, Germany
Published October 9, 2006
The Franz Josef Strauss, or Munich, International Airport served 29 million passengers in 2005, making it Germany’s second-busiest airport, after Frankfurt. This astronaut photograph, taken from the International Space Station, shows enough detail to distinguish individual airplanes on the terminal apron, and the dark gray-blue rooftop of Terminal 2.
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Wave Patterns Near Bajo Nuevo Reef, Caribbean Sea
Published October 2, 2006
In these images captured by International Space Station astronauts on August 27, 2006, bright sunlight glinting off the western Caribbean Sea reveals intersecting wave patterns and oily surfactants on the surface waters around Bajo Nuevo Reef. Bajo Nuevo is a collection of small islets arranged into two U-shaped cays, low islands made of coral or sand. This pair of images shows the easternmost of the two cays (also known as “keys”) and surrounding waters.
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Day Fire, Southern California
Published September 25, 2006
The Day Fire started in Los Padres National Forest north of Los Angeles on September 4, 2006. Easterly winds on September 17 blew the smoke westward, out to sea, and International Space Station astronauts observed this wind shift. In this astronaut photograph, the forested mountains north of Los Angeles appear dark green, and the smoke appears gray. Dense farmland appears at the south end of California’s Central Valley, in the upper left corner. Near top center, the western corner of the Mojave Desert is framed by a “V” of mountains. In the Mojave just beyond the top edge of the image (visible in the large version) are dry lakes that appear as white patches; one of these lakes acts as a landing site for the Space Shuttle.
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Crater Lake, Oregon
Published September 18, 2006
Crater Lake is formed from the caldera of Mount Mazama. Part of the Cascades volcanic chain, Mount Mazama sits between the Three Sisters volcanoes to the north and Mount Shasta to the south. The catastrophic eruption of Mount Mazama that occurred approximately 7,700 years ago destroyed the volcano while simultaneously forming the basin for Crater Lake. Eruptive activity continued in the region for perhaps a few hundred years after the major eruption. Evidence of this activity lingers in volcanic rocks, lava flows, and domes beneath the lake surface; the small cone of Wizard Island is the only visible portion of these younger rocks. Although considered a dormant volcano, Crater Lake is part of the United States Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory seismic monitoring network.
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Dune Types in the Issaouane Erg, Eastern Algeria
Published September 11, 2006
One of the main reasons that rainless regions like the Sahara Desert are interesting from the perspective of landscape science is that the work of flowing water—mainly streams and rivers—becomes less important than the work of wind. Over millennia, if enough sand is available, winds can generate dunes of enormous size, arranged in regular patterns. Long, linear dunes stretch generally north to south across much of northeast Algeria, covering a vast tract (~140,000 square kilometers) of the Sahara Desert known as the Erg Oriental. Erg means “dune sea” in Arabic, and the term has been adopted by modern geologists. Spanning this image from a point on the southwest margin of the erg (image center point: 28.9°N 4.8°W) are a series of 2-kilometer-wide linear dunes, comprised of red sand. The dune chains are more than 100 meters high. The “streets” between the dunes are grayer areas free of sand.
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