Showing posts with label satellite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satellite. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Tiger stripes on Enceladus...

as seen in the infrared seem to coincide with the fractures that release jets of water vapor and ice particles (click to enlarge).  Here's the full story:  Cassini Finds Warm Cracks on Enceladus.

RELATED: Cassini Captures Bright Jets At Enceladus.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

A visual encyclopedia...

of Enceladus, one of the most intriguing moons in the solar system, in an image gallery at Wired.com.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

An image of Earth...

from space showing central and southern Utah (click to enlarge.) That's the Great Salt Lake in the upper-left and the snow covered Wasatch range oriented north-south just left of center. If you know your Colorado Plateau geography you can easily identify the Green, San Juan and Colorado Rivers, the San Rafael Swell, the Henry, Abajo and La Sal Mountains among other prominent landforms.

Note: I'm actually in this image though I doubt you can see me. At the time the photo was taken I was on leave and doing fieldwork in the Moab area in the right-center portion of the image. No, it doesn't help to squint.

Image credit: Envisat's (ESO) Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) on 27 April 2008

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

An image of Earth...

from space showing the channeled scablands of eastern Washington (click to enlarge.) J Harlen Bretz proposed the outrageous idea of a catastrophic flood origin of many of the landforms in this region without the benefit of satellite imagery. The braided flood channels carved by the outburst of glacial Lake Missoula are clearly obvious in this image where overlying soils have been stripped to barren basalt bedrock.

This image includes the Grand Coulee with Banks Lake on the west (left), the community of Moses Lake (bottom left) and the Spokane River - Columbia River confluence (upper right.)

Image credit: Enhanced Thematic Mapper on NASA’s Landsat 7 taken on 23 July 1999 (NASA)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

An image of Earth...


from space showing the Mississippi delta, a highly-constructive fluvial-dominated delta (click to enlarge.) It should be obvious why the term "birds-foot delta" is applied to this landform. The Atchafalaya River can be seen on the left side of the image.

Image credit: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, 11 February 2005.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

An image of Earth...


from space, showing the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) where it enters the Bay of Bengal. Students that have taken my strat/sed course can surely identify this as a classic tidal-dominated delta, or at least they should be able to! (Click to enlarge.) Note the large plumes of suspended sediment being shed from this enormous watershed that drains the southern side of the Himalaya Mountains.

Credit: Image acquired using the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) camera on Envisat (ESA) on 8 November 2003.