Science

Earth as Art: 5 Most Popular Landsat Satellite Images

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Landsat satellite program, the public was given the difficult task of choosing the best of the more than 120 images in the Earth as Art collection. The top five selections, based on more than 14,000 votes, are featured here.
  • Baltic Sea
  • Yukon Delta
  • Mississippi River
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baltic-sea
More From Landsat:
Landsat’s Most Historically Significant Images
Earth as Art: Stunning Images From SpaceImages of Earth from space give us a different, often enlightening and even inspirational view of our planet. The USGS and NASA have taken some of the more interesting images from the Landsat satellites and added some false color, digitally produced by sensors on the satellites, to accentuate different features and create some truly beautiful works of art. The first Landsat satellite was launched on July 23, 1972. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Landsat mission, the public was given the difficult task of choosing the best of the more than 120 images in the Earth as Art collection. The top five selections, based on more than 14,000 votes, are featured here in descending order (above: first place). Your challenge is to select just one of these incredible images for your computer desktop. Above:

Phytoplankton in the Baltic Sea

In the style of Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night," massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Population explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, like the one shown here, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters, fueling the growth and reproduction of these tiny plants. This image was acquired by Landsat 7 on July 13, 2005. Image and caption: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/USGS.