Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The April 2023 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.  How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature. If you think something is interesting or ..read more

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The March 2023 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.  How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature. If you think something is interesting o ..read more

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The February 2023 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.  How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature. If you think something is interesting ..read more

Update on January 30, 2023: This puzzler image shows snowy dunes in the Taklamakan Desert in January 2023. Congratulations to Holger Wille for being the first reader to correctly identify the image. Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The January 2023 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.  How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and of ..read more

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The December 2022 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.  How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature. If you think something is interesting ..read more

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2022 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting. This month, special mention will go to those who can also describe what the visualization below the image is showing. How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands ..read more

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The September 2022 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting. How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location, or you can dig deeper and offer details about what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature. If you think something is interesting or n ..read more

Update on August 5, 2022: This puzzler image shows a portion of Nordaustlandet—a large island in northeast Svalbard. The image was acquired after a record amount of melting took place across the Norwegian archipelago in summer 2022. Notice the extensive light-blue areas where snow and firn have melted away and exposed bare ice (light blue). Congratulations to Yoshihiro Nakayama, who correctly identified the location. Special mention goes to Soren J and others for pointing features associated with melting. Read more in the related Image of the Day. Every month on ..read more

Participants taking cloud observations. Image credit: The GLOBE Program Clouds are an important part of the climate system. They affect how much sunlight reaches the ground and how much heat returns to space, which in turn affects Earth’s temperature and rainfall patterns. Scientists are working to better understand the role that clouds play in the global climate system, but that requires significant amounts of data. “No single cloud observation method or system … is able to provide a complete and accurate depiction of cloud properties across the Earth under the many conditions that naturally ..read more

Update on June 28, 2022: Drumroll please….. ….the answer is….PARAMARIBO, SURINAME. The natural-color image was acquired in June 2022 by the satellite’s Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. Read more about Paramaribo in our June 27 Image of the Day. Congratulations to Firdous Khodabaks, Corey TM, and Nerdonna for being among the first readers to correctly identify the location. Thanks also for sharing interesting details about oil refining, recent flooding, and the presidential palace. Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The June 2022 puzzler is shown ..read more