Image of the Day September 26, 2018

Source: Digital Globe

Image of the Day September 26, 2018

This image obtained from WorldView-2 displays a newly created island as a result of a volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan in 2016. You can see the smoke from the volcano and small patch of life(green circle) on the island. This image is of immense importance because scientists can study how islands form.  Furthermore, scientists can remotely study how life can be created on islands without physically interfering with the process. 

Image of the day, September 20th

Korean Peninsula at night

You can see urbanization in South Korea with a major center in northern part being Seoul. There is the brightly lit DMZ (demilitarized zone) line dividing the two countries. In North Korea, there are only some lights here and there. A little towards what seems to be the capital city of Pyongyang, but nothing close to the South. It also shows the development that South Korea has undergone. What's really fascinating about this image is that you can practically see the entire outline map of South Korea and it is easy to mistake it for an island because of the darkness around it. This image can help us understand rates of development and urbanization as well as patterns of urbanization in the Korean peninsula.  

Mass in Managua, September 18, 2018

This image shows a large body of people attending mass at a cathedral, a cathedral which has been central to the student-led protests against changes to social security and against general corruption in Nicaragua. This photo highlights the community involvement in the protests, as masses in Nicaragua are generally not well attended, but here there are hundreds of people who don't even fit in the church.


Here's a good summary of the history of the protests in Nicaragua:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/americas/nicaragua-church-protest.html

Timelapse of Coral Bleaching in Australia

This picture shows the effects of climate change on a Staghorn Coral reef bed over the time span of less than a year. This picture is from the production of Chasing Coral and was taken off the East coast of Australia. The side-to-side comparison of before and after, as well as the ability to capture the atmosphere to land barrier, is what makes this picture so meaningful to me. This topic is important, because things under water, for the most part, are out of sight for society and we don't realize what it happening. This picture can also come across as despiteful because the bleached side shows miles of these elegant pure white structures, and many people do know how to interpret that. The fact is that they aren't dead yet, the coral has just lost its symbolic relationship with the photosynthetic organisms that reside with the coral and will be on the path to death without the nutrients from this relationship. 

http://news.janegoodall.org/2017/09/06/exclusive-chasing-coral-interview-with-filmmaker-jeff-orlowski/

California wildfires

The image shows a part of California that is being burned by the wildfires. Oleg Artemyev, a Russian astronaut on the International Space Station, posted this and other similar pictures on Twitter. The image shows mountains that are half heavily-obscured by smoke, and half lightly-obscured. There look to be three areas of concentration where the smoke is streaming up. It's important that we have context for the size and extent of these wildfires, especially since California is seeing a record-sized fire complex this year, and there are many other fires throughout the state.

Image of the day, August 6, 2018

The Twin Eau Claire Craters of Northwestern Quebec

Description:

This NASA Earth Observatory image titled “A One-Two Punch” exhibits a double crater landscape in northwestern Quebec. This event was originally believed to have been the result of a binary asteroid in the Carboniferous Period. The Eau Claire lakes have the unique round shape of complex craters including peak rings caused by the impact, forming a small, rounded chain of islands. The limited topsoil of the area leads to the grey-tan shade of the landscape and limited vegetation cover. This unique, tundra like landscape is the result of glacial scraping that formed elongated lake shapes but left the craters in the bedrock. They removed the lighter debris and impact mounds of the older-than-glacial craters, revealing their extent and shape. The larger lake, Eau Claire West, is 36 km (22mi) in diameter with the smaller eastern lake being 26 km (16 mi) in diameter.

It has recently (2014) come to light that the craters were likely formed about 200 million years apart from each other.
They say lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, but I guess asteroids might? 

Coordinates: 56°08′N 74°18′W 

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/82433/a-one-two-punch 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670371400595X 

Avalanche Caught in the Act

This false-color image captured by the Thematic Mapper sensor on Landsat 5 on April 17 of 1996. I was drawn to this image not only from the striking color composite and aesthetic appeal, but also the curious event captured within it. Can you spot the billowing plume of an avalanche? 

The area captured in the image is the Karakoram range in Northern Pakistan. The image combines infrared, red and green wavelengths. I'm interested to know which band on Landsat 5 TM was used for infrared. The post does not specify, and it is certainly a unique combination of colors and bands to produce this imagery. In this image snow appears red, exposed moraine and soil is cyan, and shadows appear black. 

In the central region of the image there is a unique, billowy feature that is an avalanche that was captured by the Landsat 5 TM. The avalanche occurred on a SE flank of Kanjut Sar, the 26th highest mountain on earth at 7760meters.

Satellite imagery of an avalanche as it's occurring seems to be a fairly rare occurrence -- especially historically as temporal resolution was lower. Getting a synoptic view of large-scale avalanches as they're occurring sounds like it may pretty interesting to scientists hoping to understand avalanche behavior, or where they're likely to occur. 

This image was happened upon by a research team investigating surging glaciers -- glaciers which do not have a constant or predictable flow, and are subjected to cyclical flow instabilities. In going down that rabbit-hole, I came across this gif the research team composed of the karakoram range's surging glaciers during a period of high advancement.

I also enjoyed reading about the 'medial moraine' bands that are produced from surging glaciers. These strips of rock and debris can be seen as the blue stripes down the center of the red glaciers, creating a beautiful pattern. 

Link:

Image: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90528/a-stroke-of-luck

Research Team: http://mountainhydrology.org/

Surging Glaciers: http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/modern-glaciers/glacier-flow-2/surging-glaciers/

The Art and Beauty of Nature - Malaspina Glacier, Mt. Saint Elias, Yakutat Bay, Alaska

     This image is of the Malaspina Glacier in southeast Alaska. I have included a false color image and a "true color" image for comparison.  The Malaspina Glacier is the largest piedmont (located at the foot of a mountainous region) glacier in North America, and according to Wikipedia "it is the largest piedmont glacier in the world." This image was taken through use of the OLI sensor onboard Landsat 8 on Sept. 24, 2014.

     Of all the 100,000+ glaciers in Alaska, the Malaspina Glacier is unique because it is a compound glacier formed by the merging of the Agassiz Glacier to the left and the better known Seward Glacier (alpine or valley glacier) from above. Resembling an alluvial fan, the Malaspina Glacier is approximately 40 miles "wide" x 30 miles "long."  Also pictured are the Agassiz Glacier to the left and Hayden Glacier to the right. 

https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/2000/2749/landsat_art_malaspina_lrg.jpg

https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/86000/86767/malaspina_oli_2014267_lrg.jpg

References:

www.caltech.edu

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Imagery of the Day, July 2nd

Description: 

From left to right, the date is 10/29/2017, 11/30/2017, 12/16/2017.

The location I focus on is Bali, Indonesia. Which is in the left part of each imagery. If we zoom in, we can see Mountain Agung, an active volcano. In the first imagery, we can clearly see the red, bright magma. And there are lots of ash in the second imagery. The ash went off in the third, but the magma still exists, meaning an unfinished eruption. 

Links to relevant website(s): 

http://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=264020