Another spectacular example from the Earth as Art series.
The Lena River, some 2,800 miles(4,500km) long, is one of the largest rivers in the world. The Lena Delta Reserve is the most extensive protected wilderness area in Russia. It is an important refuge and breeding grounds for many species of Siberian wildlife.
To download the image in high resolution, register at the USGS here.
Vivid colors belie the arid landscape of northern Chile where the Atacama Desert, one of the world’s driest, meets the foothills of the Andes. Here salt pans and gorges choked with mineral-streaked sediments give way to white-capped volcanoes.
Click to download a hi-res version.
Source: NASA
Today’s Geo-Pict is from NASA’s Earth as Art series, a striking satellite image of Lake Disappointment in Western Australia.
Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake that covers approximately 370,650 acres on the edge of Western Australia’s Gibson Desert. Explorer Frank Hann supposedly named the lake in 1897 after following a number of creeks that he thought would lead to a large lake. They did, but the lake’s extremely salty water was not drinkable.
Lake Disappointment, Australia
I thought this was so interesting — cubical pyrite, exemplar on its rock mother with an antiquity of 120 million years, coming fron Navajun (La Rioja, Spain), by Jesús Manuel Nieto Bobadilla of Alicante, Spain.
The West Fjords are a series of peninsulas in northwestern Iceland. They represent less than one-eighth the country’s land area, but their jagged perimeter accounts for more than half of Iceland’s total coastline.
Source: NASA; Library of Congress
Earth as Art: Cloud formations over the western Aleutian Islands.
Extensive wetlands lie near the town of Yellowknife, near the Great Slave Lake in northern Canada. The shallow lakes seen in this image have formed in grooves in the landscape that were carved by glaciers during the last Ice Age.
You can download poster version of this image! Click here.
Image courtesy of USGS National Center for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Science Office
I went to the CFMS Tri-State Convention and Lapidary Show in Palmdale, CA, yesterday. This was their 68th year! By the time I got there it had been going on for three days so unfortunately I missed most of the demonstrations and talks. But I saw the many cases of impressive displays and had the chance to chat with some vendors and club members.
I took a few photos, but alas, I have no macro lens so the impressiveness of the specimens doesn’t quite translate. But I’ll post a few, with thanks to the vendors.
Pyrite, sulfur, museum-grade citrine and quartz from Brazil
Thanks to Dragon Minerals, Kristauphe Gems and Glidden Enterprises.
Please visit their sites 🙂
The Ganges River forms an extensive delta where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. The delta is largely covered with a swamp forest known as the Sunderbans, which is home to the Royal Bengal Tiger. From the Earth as Art collection of the USGS.
By Lorenzo S.; Emilia Romagna, Italy.
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