Satellite Imagery Gallery

Jupiter and Io, New Horizons image

Jupiter and Io. Montage of images of Jupiter (left) and its moon Io (right), obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft in February and March 2007 as it passed Jupiter on its way to Pluto. The image of Jupiter was obtained with its infrared spectrometer (LEISA). The different colours show high-altitude clouds (blue), and deeper clouds (red). The Great Red Spot (lower left) is blue and white. The Io image was obtained in approximate true colour with a long-range camera (LORRI) and a multispectral camera (MVIC). The red dot on the nightside of Io is an eruption of the Tvashtar volcano. The volcanic plume (blue) seen above the eruption is 330 kilometres high. Jupiter is the solar system's largest planet

© NASA/JHU/APL/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Columbia Glacier, Alaska, 1989

Columbia Glacier, Alaska. False-colour satellite image of the Columbia Glacier, Alaska, USA, taken in 1989. Columbia Glacier descends from an ice field (top) 3, 050 metres above sea level, down the flanks of the Chugach Mountains, and into a narrow inlet that leads into Prince William Sound (bottom centre) in southeastern Alaska. It is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in the world. Snow and ice appears bright cyan, vegetation is green, clouds are white or light orange, and the open ocean is dark blue. Exposed bedrock is brown, while rocky debris on the glacier's surface is gray. Between 1980 and 2011 the glacier had retreated 20 kilometres north and lost roughly half its thickness and volume. Imaged by NASA's Landsat satellites, on 26th June

© NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Arctic ice minimum extent, 2013 C017/3623

Arctic ice minimum extent. Satellite image showing the Arctic polar ice cap at its annual minimum extent on 12th September 2013. The Arctic sea ice (white with blue tint) reaches a minimum in September, at the end of the Arctic summer. This minimal ice area is called the perennial ice cover. The perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since satellites began observing it in 1979, at a rate of about 10 percent per decade. The sea ice here covers 5.1 million square kilometres. This decrease is attributed to global warming. Data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument on the Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water (GCOM-W1) satellite

© NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/JAXA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY