Earth from space: image of the week

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Earth from Space: The Danakil Depression
21/11/2025

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over one of Earth’s most extreme environments: the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.

Located in northeastern Ethiopia, near the border with Eritrea, the Danakil Depression lies between the Danakil Alps on the east and the Ethiopian Plateau on the west. It is a plain formed by the continental drift of three tectonic plates, thinning Earth’s crust as they pull apart.

This tectonic setting, called the Afar Triple Junction, is responsible for shaping the region's diverse geological features. Due to its unique geology, Danakil’s landscape features a combination of salt flats, desert shrubland and active volcanoes, producing hot, acidic springs with vibrantly coloured mineral pools.

Danakil is known for being one of the lowest, hottest and driest places on Earth. It sits at an average of 120 m below sea level, with annual temperatures sometimes reaching above 50°C. It receives very little rainfall, with most of it evaporating quickly.

This false-colour image from 7 August 2025 shows the northern part of the Danakil Depression.

The various shades of green reflect the different surface types, showing evidence of ancient marine and river systems across the whole image. Lighter greens denote older geology, while darker tones indicate younger terrains.

The pink expanse denotes a complex hydrothermal system formed by the hot springs and the acidic ponds in the area. The green feature at its centre is Dallol, a depression hosting a cinder cone volcano. Dallol is frequently referred to as one of the most inhospitable and hottest inhabited places on Earth.

At the bottom of the image, two lakes – Karum and, further south, Bakili – can be seen in black, as the image was processed using Sentinel-2’s near-infrared channel which makes water bodies appear dark or black.

Southwest of Lake Karum rises Gada Ale, a 287-m-high stratovolcano built of lava and ash. Its gently sloping sides of basaltic lava appear in a dark hue, with the youngest flows being the darkest colours. 

Due to its extreme conditions, visiting and studying this area can be quite challenging. From their vantage point in space, Earth orbserving satellites, such as Copernicus Sentinel-2, are the perfect tool to systematically image and monitor such remote and unique environments.

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Earth from Space: Eye of the Sahara
28/11/2025

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures a spectacular geological wonder in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania: the Richat Structure.

This giant feature looks out from a sea of golden sand in the Adrar Region of northern Mauritania. Once thought to be the site of a meteor impact, the Richat Structure is now believed to have been caused by a process of uplift of a large dome of molten rock that, once at the surface, was shaped by wind, sand and water erosion. Geologists agree that the structure is at least 100 million years old.

The layered formation consists of a series of concentric rings and resembles a bull’s eye from space, so is also known as the eye of the Sahara or the eye of Africa.

The Richat Structure, 50 km in diameter, is easier to observe from space than from the ground, and has been a familiar landmark for astronauts since the earliest manned missions.

In this comparison, we can see two views captured in September 2025: the image on the left is in natural colour, while the image on the right is a false-colour combination which highlights specific features.

This remarkable formation exposes layers of sedimentary rock in different places, depending on the rates of erosion on the varying rock types. This can be better appreciated in the false-colour image. The more erosion-resistant quartzite sandstones appear in shades of red and pink and form the outer rings and high ridges internally, with valleys of less-resistant rock between them visible as darker areas. The central rings of the eye are about 80 m tall, with rocks older than those forming the outer rings.

In the image on the left, the dark area surrounding the eye is part of the Adrar plateau of sedimentary rock standing some 200 m above the surrounding desert sands, which in turn are part of the Erg Ouarane, an immense sand expanse stretching hundreds of kilometres to Mali.

Sand is also clearly visible encroaching into the structure’s southern side. Here, individual trees and bushes can be spotted as tiny dots, which are visible in purple in the false-colour image, following a dry riverbed structure.

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Earth from Space: Singing dunes and mysterious lakes
05/12/2025

This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image features part of the Badain Jaran Desert in northwestern China.

With an area of about 49 000 sq km, Badain Jaran is China’s third largest desert. It lies within the larger Gobi Desert in the Alxa Plateau at about 1200 m above sea level. The remote Badain Jaran Desert displays a varied landscape of stunning natural wonders, such as wind-eroded landforms, oases and remarkable towering dunes interspersed with desert lakes.

In this radar image from September 2025, the ripple effect denotes the high density of parallel sand dunes, including some of the tallest in the world, with one reaching the record height of 460 m – higher than the Empire State Building. Although most dunes are dynamic due to shifting sand, the tallest megadunes are usually stationary with a solid core and in winter they are covered with snow.

Badain Jaran is one of the few places in the world where the 'singing sand dunes' phenomenon occurs. Singing sands are generated when the desert wind pulls the top layer of sand off the layer below, resulting in the sand emitting a sharp, loud sound that can last up to several minutes. The ‘singing’ is most prominent in the dry, hot summer when the wind is strong and slopes are steep.

The Badain Jaran Desert is also well known for hosting over 100 lakes that can be seen in the image as black spots nestled among the dunes. They are either freshwater or extremely saline lakes and give the desert its name, which means ‘mysterious lakes’ in Mongolian. Their origin in fact is still debated although they are believed to be fed by underground springs.

The wide variety of landscapes leads to many different habitats and hence a high level of biodiversity. Despite being a sandy desert, Badain Jaran is home to abundant plant and animal life, and its lakes also offer a favourable environment for a large number of aquatic species.

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Europe at night from space
17/12/2025

Europe shines brightly at night, as seen in this mosaic created from over 7000 pictures taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. This is the first nighttime mosaic of Europe in colour ever produced with calibrated space images.

The composition uses images from 2017 with a resolution of around 100 metres per pixel. Until 2021, the International Space Station was the only spacecraft suitable for capturing colour images of Earth at night. Resolution is equally important: astronauts were able to capture images at five metres per pixel, exceeding the capabilities that most satellites can currently offer.

Astronaut photography has emerged as the best source for scientists to map artificial light. All space agencies and their crews contribute to the effort, with ESA astronauts playing a vital role since Paolo Nespoli became one of the pioneers of nighttime photography from space in 2010.

“Most of the images that you see of Europe at night are artistic interpretations of black and white images, not real colour,” explains Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain.

By combining citizen science with artificial intelligence, the Cities at Night project created the mosaic by processing thousands of images and time-lapses, and correcting distortions in them. The missing patches at the bottom (north of Africa) and top (Scotland in the UK) of this mosaic are filled with data from NASA’s weather satellite Suomi NPP.

Different colours represent different lighting technologies, with warmer, redder tones generally indicating sodium light sources. The whiter and bluer emissions belong to light-emitting diode lamps, or LED technology, in our streets. The whitening of artificial light can be seen in this comparison between 2017 and 2022.

According to scientists, the transition towards white and blue-rich light radiation is eroding the natural nighttime cycles across the continent. Excessive lighting disrupts the circadian day-and-night rhythm of living organisms, including humans, with negative health effects on species and whole ecosystems.

A scientific study identified three major negative impacts: the suppression of melatonin, the response of insects and bats towards or away from light, and the visibility of stars in the night sky.

“Astronaut photography allows us to look back in time at global light pollution during periods when no colour-sensitive satellites existed,” adds Alejandro.

As part of the Plan-B project to protect our biodiversity and ecosystems, Cities at Night will release an app in 2026 that will allow Europeans to check how light pollution has evolved over time where they live.

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Earth from Space: Manicouagan crater
19/12/2025

This week Earth from Space features a wintery image: a red and white sphere that, if seen from a distance, resembles a festive decoration.

The ‘bauble’ in question is actually the Manicouagan crater in the Canadian province of Quebec. Visible from space, this round structure was formed by a giant asteroid impact some 214 million years ago.

The anular reservoir, with René-Levasseur Island at its centre, is some 700 km north-east of Quebec City. Sometimes referred to as the ‘eye of Quebec’, it spans 72 km from east to west, while the asteroid that caused the impact is thought to have been 5 km in diameter.

The reservoir, also known as Manicouagan lake, was created in the 1960s as part of a hydroelectric project to provide hydropower across the province. The Manicouagan river is visible at the bottom of the image as it leaves the reservoir.

This false-colour image was captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2. The instruments on board the Sentinel-2 satellites are high-resolution multispectral imagers with 13 spectral bands. They provide high-resolution images to within 10 m.

In this image, the white is actually snow. Frozen lake water – visible across the image if you zoom in, particularly on René-Levasseur Island – is shown in blue. The area’s thick vegetation, shown in red, includes boreal forest and tundra that are part of a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve.

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Fireworks from space
30/12/2025

As she flew 400 km above Earth at hypersonic speed, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers caught a gigantic spark with blue flashes and red tentacles shooting upwards.

This electrical show was born from a summer thunderstorm in 2025. What Nichole captured from orbit is one of the rarest examples of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) – atmospheric phenomena rarely visible from Earth because they take place above the clouds, at altitudes between 40 and 80 kilometres. 

In the image, a blue jet propagates into space towards the upper layers of the atmosphere. The beam of light is followed by red flashes spreading like tentacles across the sky. The magnificent event lasted less than a second.

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured the first pulsating blue jet from space a decade ago, providing a new perspective on electrical activity at the top of thunderstorms. Scientists began to learn what types of clouds trigger such phenomena and how they may affect the chemistry of the atmosphere.

These were not isolated observations of nature’s fireworks. On another night in 2024, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps directed a high-resolution camera from the International Space Station towards a thunderstorm in Australia. With the camera set at the fastest frame rate for slow-motion video, she managed to record for the first time pulsating giant jet with blue and red bursts in all its splendour from space. 

Her recording is a continuation of the Thor-Davis experiment designed to investigate lightning in the upper atmosphere and how it might affect the concentration of greenhouse gases. The experiment is called Thor after the god of thunder, lightning and storms in Nordic mythology and is led by the Danish Technical University (DTU) together with the European Space Agency.

Lightning triggers powerful electrical bursts in our atmosphere almost every second, yet the inner workings of these forces of nature are still not fully understood. Capturing such phenomena is vital for scientists researching Earth’s weather systems.

CREDIT
NASA/N. Ayers

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Smoke plumes from Chile wildfires seen by Sentinel-3
20/01/2026

This image, captured by Copernicus Sentinel-3 on 18 January 2026, shows clouds of smoke from wildfires on the coast of Chile.

The fires have been burning in numerous locations along Chile’s coast, including in the regions of Ñuble and Biobío, where a state of catastrophe has been declared.

This image shows one of the most badly affected areas, near the city of Concepcion, approximately 570 km southwest of the capital Santiago. The fires have been exacerbated by intense heat in the region and high winds, with parts of central and southern Chile forecast to reach temperatures up to 35 degrees Celcius on Tuesday. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed in the fire and at least 19 casualties have been reported.

The image was captured by Sentinel-3’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), an imaging spectrometer. OLCI’s 21 distinct spectral bands measure data on ocean colour and vegetation with a spatial resolution of 300 m. This provides data for monitoring ocean ecosystems, supporting crop management and agriculture and providing estimates of atmospheric aerosol and clouds.

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission consists of two satellites, with a third satellite due to be launched later this year.

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Earth from Space: Pantanal
23/01/2026

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us at the Brazilian-Bolivian border over part of the Pantanal region, a unique ecosystem, home to an impressive variety of plants and wildlife.

Covering an area of up to 200 000 sq km, the Pantanal is the largest floodplain in the world and a wetland of international importance. It is mainly located within the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, but it also extends into Bolivia and Paraguay.

This image from September 2025 captures a small fraction of the Pantanal, which straddles the border between Bolivia to the west, and the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso to the north and Mato Grosso do Sul to the east. A complex mosaic of flooded grasslands, savannas, tropical forests, rivers and human settlements are visible in the image.

The dark green corridor slicing vertically through the centre is dense, ‘riparian’ vegetation – which is found along the floodplain channels and permanent wetlands. In contrast,  the surrounding savannas are visible in brown.

The Pantanal acts as an enormous internal delta, where several rivers merge, feeding the vast network of wetlands. The Rio Paraguay, seen meandering across the green lush band, is the most important river in Pantanal as its natural flood cycle creates the region's unique environment and supports its diverse fauna.

Following the riverbed southwards, we can see some urban structures. The largest to the west is the Brazilian city of Corumbá, which serves as a gateway to Pantanal. Its rectangular grid is surrounded to the south by a patchwork of fields and brownish pastures.

The reddish-brown areas are expanses of cracked clay soil, which are exposed during the dry season. These areas, barren in September when this image was acquired, become green during the wet season from November to April.

The two conurbations visible west of Corumbá are the inland ports of Puerto Suarez and Puerto Quijarro, on the Bolivian side of the border. The light brown patches on the left represent savanna and forest cleared for cattle pastures and ranches. The thin strips of land are most likely cultivated soybean fields.

This region has undergone significant deforestation in recent years, with some areas transformed from dense forest into a mosaic of fields.