NEW EARTH MASTERPIECE UNVEILED
Until Musk or Branson kick their space business explorations up a few notches, NASA is still the only one with a satellite out there delivering images that show us the beauty of our planet from an impressionist point of view.
The latest photo, taken by the Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite, a joint project of NASA and the US Geological Survey just last week, on April 29, memorializes the breath of the Paluweh volcano as it heaves, all hot and bothered, out of the middle of Indonesia’s Flores Sea. White wisps, detected by the satellite’s Operational Land Imager, brush across the deep blue ocean backdrop, as if a painter gestured with a delicate wash of thin titanium oxide across a rough canvas. They aren’t at all fainthearted. They are just what we can see from many hundreds of miles up in space, as tons of ash and smoke reach up and away, separating from its bellowing source.
The Thermal Infrared Sensor, mounted on the Landsat, added flourish to this magnificent work of art by illuminating the hotspot at the top of Paluweh’s peak, where molten lava has been spilling for months. Together, the OLI and the TIRS, mounted on the Landsat, marry massive quantities of infinitesimal bits of data, gathered from thousands of sensors, fractional temperature and color differentials among them, to create this masterpiece.
This is just one of the many pieces created by NASA’s Landsat program, as it has been operating since its inception in 1972. Landsat has been a genius impressionist, working its palate like a digital Van Gogh or Monet, to produce mind-bending visions of where we live. See more below.
Van Gogh from Space Landsat 7 Acquired 7/13/2005
Phytoplankton blooms around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea
More than just pretty pictures, Landsat’s images tell us how we are faring as our tiny blue marble rolls around the universe, giving us 40 years of continuous data streams, monitoring our climate, carbon cycle, ecosystems, water cycle, biogeochemistry, and changes in the earth’s surface. It also tells us about ourselves and the effects our collective 7 billion lives have had on our planet. We’ve learned, at least to some degree, how to improve the health and biodiversity of our lifeforms, as well as how to better manage our resources, plan our cities, and recover from disasters.
Here are more of some of the most beautiful images taken during the system's lifespan:
Lake Eyre Landsat 5 Acquired 8/5/2006
Lake Eyre in South Australia
(Photo: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/USGS)
Algerian Abstract Landsat 5 Acquired 4/8/1985
Erg Iguidi, spanning from Algeria into Mauritania in northwestern Africa
Meandering Mississippi Landsat 7 Acquired 5/28/2003
Mississippi RIver south of Memphis, Tennessee, (border between Arkansas & Mississippi)
(Photo: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/USGS)
Yukon Delta Landsat 7 Acquired 9/22/2002
Yukon Delta in Southwest Alaska
Links:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/40th-earthasart.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/main/index.html
