The Landsat program has been a huge success story throughout the course of earth observation history. The most current system, Landsat 8, was launched on February 11th, 2013, and delivered its first image exactly seven years ago, on March 18th of 2013. With a lot of inspiration from NASA’s Image of the Day, we want to celebrate this anniversary by showing some of the most spectacular images from this timespan around the globe.
Phytoplankton blooms are a regular phenomemon in the Baltic Sea, forming every summer as a result of a rising water temperature and nutrient availability. In this spectacular image,
currents and vortices become visible through the patterns that are formed by the algae.
The Richat Structure or Guelb er Richat in Mauritania in the western Sahara is one the most stunning geological structures visible from space. It most likely formed by the erosion of a
large magma dome, exposing the different rock layers that become visible in this false-color composite.
The Suwannee, also called "blackwater river", dumps its swampy water into the Gulf of Mexico, making it look like ink being poured into water.
The devastating wildfires in Australia in the years 2019 and 2020 shook the nation and the world, turning out to be the worst on record. Kangaroo Island off the coast of Adelaide was
particularly impacted, as this false-color composite shows. The brown areas are already burnt, with the trails of still active fires being visible as sharp red lines.
This stratovolcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia is the highest mountain in the area and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. In this false-color composite, showing
an eruption in 2013, the heat that is being released becomes visible as an eery red glow in the infrared spectrum.
What looks like an image from the Caribbean is actually a group of islands in the northern part of Lake Michigan, USA. The water is pretty clear in that region, revealing underwater
ridges that were formed by retreating glaciers and erosion.
The Lena river in Russia forms one of the most spectacular deltas in the world when it reaches the Arctic ocean. Mostly frozen throughout the year, the area becomes a swampy
wetland in the summer, as can be seen by the countless ponds and pools in this false-color composite.
Located right at the border of Canada and Alaska, USA, Malaspina Glacier is part of the Piedmont glacier family, which spread their ice flow in a fan-like manner. Malaspina is the largest
of its type in North America and has formed its pancake-like look when moving forward in spurts.
The Rio Doce incident in 2015 was caused by the collapse of a dam at an iron mining reservoir in the federal state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The toxic components of the mining
wastewater were then carried downstream and were spilled into the Atlantic Ocean, forming a sharp-edged fan at the estuary of the Rio Doce.
In the high Arctic, just off the coast of Siberia, separated ice caps look like eyes, staring up towards the sky. In between them, different geological layers become visible in this false-color
composite.
The river Thames carries high amounts of sediment when it enters the North Sea, where the current and tides then create artful patterns. In this view of a large offshore windpark,
the currents become even more visible with every single wind plant creating its own trail of turbid water as the tide comes in.
These cloud patterns, known as "von Karman vortices", form when air flows over obstacles like isolated mountains or islands, these phenomena can spread out across hundreds of
kilometers.
