Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
Stunning Natural Beauty
Our Blue Marble (top image) gives us amazing and unexpected art. This natural beauty supplies some of the most breath-taking views around. Here you will find a few of its offerings.
| 1. Golden Curves in the Sand |
 Credit: European Space Imaging (EUSI) |
The curving sands in central northern Iran’s salt desert, Dasht-e Kavir, can be seen in this image from the Ikonos-2 satellite. Here, clays and sand soils have a high surface salt content owing to the concentration of minerals from high summer evaporation.
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| 2. Arizona's Painted Desert |
 Credit: NASA/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon |
In northern Arizona lies an expanse of arid, erosion-prone badlands made of multi-coloured mud stones and clays. This “Painted Desert” stretches from the Grand Canyon in the northwest to the Petrified Forest National Park in the southeast.
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| 3. Idhan Murzuq - Sea of Sand |
 Credit: NASA |
In southwestern Libya, near the borders of Algeria and Niger, lies a sand sea known as Idhan Murzuq (also Sahra Marzuq) that rarely receives water from either sky or land. The extreme desert’s complex dunes are shaped by dry winds. But extending from the northeast quarter, a corridor of sand lines what used to be a river channel: Wadi Barjuj.
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| 4. Lake Dundas - Encrusted Lake |
 Credit: NASA |
Salt lakes of assorted sizes occur throughout southwestern Australia, and one of the larger ones is Lake Dundas. Located about 130 kilometres (80 miles) inland from the coastal city of Esperance, Lake Dundas occupies a region of low rainfall and abundant sunshine. This salt-encrusted lake presents a complex face to satellite sensors, with plentiful islands poking above the water line.
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| 5. Cloud Swirls over the Indian Ocean |
 Credit: NASA |
As citizens of northern countries ponder sculpted snow and ice, or icings for baked goods, the summer skies over the southern oceans offered their own vision in white in the early winter of 2011. The brush strokes of bright holiday swirls were made by winds and atmospheric eddies moving over the far southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.
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| 6. Madagascar’s Bombetoka Bay |
Credit: NASA
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On the northwestern coast of Madagascar, the salty waters of the Mozambique Channel penetrate inland to join with the freshwater outflow of the Betsiboka River, forming Bombetoka Bay. Numerous islands and sandbars have formed in the estuary from the large amount of sediment carried in by the Betsiboka River and have been shaped by the flow of the river and the push and pull of tides.
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| 7. South African Ocean Bloom |
 Credit: NASA |
Off the coast of South Africa, near where the South Atlantic meets the Southern Indian Ocean, a massive summer phytoplankton bloom coloured the waters with a swirl of turquoise, green and white in late December 2011. Although this circular bloom has the appearance of a precious antique gaming marble, it is actually the result of millions of tiny plant-like organisms (phytoplankton) which are growing where nutrient-rich waters mix together.
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