A photograph from the space station shows some of the natural features that have governed the growth of the city.
Image of the Day Human Presence
The easily recognized boot of Italy is spread across this panorama taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Image of the Day Land Human Presence
As seen from the International Space Station, a long trench divides the Columbia Mountains and the Canadian Rockies.
Image of the Day Land
The evaporation of several prehistoric lakes contributed to the formation of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph when the desert center of Arabia was partly obscured by a dusty atmosphere.
Astronauts use the Sun’s reflection point to reveal features that are otherwise difficult or impossible to see.
Image of the Day Water
As moisture-filled thunderhead clouds expand upward through the atmosphere, they can hit a more stable layer and flatten into an anvil shape.
Image of the Day Atmosphere
The peninsula is highly recognizable even at night, especially when looking north, as our map-trained brains expect.
Image of the Day Land Water Human Presence
A photograph by an astronaut leads us to a teachable moment about what’s in our air.
Image of the Day Atmosphere Human Presence
This astronaut photograph shows these sister cities on the Rio Grande, the second largest metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border.
Recent fires burned away the vegetation cover of desert scrub to reveal a sheet of white sand and barchan dune patterns.
Image of the Day Life
For millennia, the river has been the most important water supply in the western Sahara Desert.
Image of the Day Land Water
The hometown of a 2014 World Series contender is brimming with baseball history.
This wide-angle panorama shows a huge swath of the western United States from Portland to Phoenix.
Distinct colors mark the communities and commerce along the Tsushima Strait, between Japan and South Korea.
Image of the Day Human Presence Remote Sensing
This protected area on North Island is centered around a volcano and sits on a promontory that juts out into the Tasman Sea.
Two images show the region before and during a vast a dust storm.
Astronauts caught a glimpse of rainforest being cleared for agriculture in Brazil.
Image of the Day Atmosphere Land Human Presence
A massive dust storm filled the skies over Libya in early September 2014.
Image of the Day Atmosphere Land
Researchers are deploying a mix of airborne and orbiting tools to unlock secrets of the most potent storms on Earth.
Image of the Day Atmosphere Water
Changing conditions in the waters near Alaska promotes late summer phytoplankton growth.
Image of the Day Life Water Water Color
PMCs have become brighter and thicker and have appeared farther south in recent years.
Different air flow patterns at low and high altitudes provoke compelling cloud features over Indonesia.
Off the northwestern coast of Australia, the sound has the second greatest daily tidal change in the world.
Astronauts collect a lot of photos of Earth at night, but they don't always know what they are looking at. You can help.
Strange spike patterns on the Siberian landscape caught the attention of astronauts on the ISS.
The bright lights of the cities are intersected and offset by the dark valley of the Jordan River and Dead Sea.
Astronauts captured an oblique view of the island that includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic as a wildfire raged in a national forest.
This shallow, saline lake in Iran is one of the largest in the Middle East. But drought and water withdrawals for farming are shrinking it.
Image of the Day Land Life Water
This wetland in the interior of Botswana is an oasis for biodiversity in the midst of the arid Kalahari Desert.