Category Earth photos

A thawing coastal glacier produces blocks of ice that break off and fall into the sea, forming icebergs. The landslides are more common in the summer months, with the thaw, and in winter, when the glaciers increase in size and speed and icebergs are released regularly. Next to the sea, the edges of the ice caps break off and give rise to the gigantic floating ice masses, partially submerged, that move at the mercy of the winds and sea currents.

The lunar crater Posidonius is located in the Mare Serenitatis or Sea of ​​Serenity. It has a diameter of 95 kilometers and a maximum depth of 2.3 kilometers. Its relatively low depth is due to the subsoil of the Posidonius crater was saturated by ascending lava, which was pushing upwards until it fractured its soil.

It was unlikely that this volcano could erupt. Mount Anatahan had not erupted throughout written history. But on May 10, 2003, this small volcano of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean, threw ashes 10,000 meters away. The explosions of Mount Anatahan continued to occur every few minutes, for two days.

The Apollo 16 ship spent three days on the Moon in April 1972, being the fifth of six moon landing missions. Apollo 16 was famous for installing and using an ultraviolet telescope in what was the first lunar observatory, and for collecting rocks and data on the mysterious highlands of the Moon.

On the west side of the visible face of the Moon we can see the Oceanus Procellarum, better known as Ocean of Storms. It is in the Procellarum basin, and is the largest of the so-called lunar seas. It has an area of ​​2,500 kilometers in length, and occupies an area of ​​1,692,000 square kilometers.

Mount Uluru, also called Ayers Rock, is considered the largest individual rock mass, or monolith, in the world. It has a length of about 2.4 km and a height of 348 meters. The walls of many of its caves are covered by paintings made thousands of years ago by prehistoric artists.

Sometimes it is night on earth, but day in heaven. As the earth rotates to eclipse the Sun, its output is shown by the horizon. Therefore, at the exit on earth, the sunlight sometimes illuminates the clouds above. Under unusual circumstances, we can see a beautiful sunrise like the one in the photo, where the clouds float so high that they can be seen in the dark.

The wonderful island of Hawaii treasures such special places as the Volcanoes National Park. As the name implies, it houses several volcanoes, two of them considered the most active in the world, the Mauna Loa and the Kilauea. But this park is much more than volcanoes, for something it is considered a World Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage.

Lightning is an electric shock that occurs between rain clouds or between one of these clouds and the earth. The discharge is visible with sinuous paths and irregular branches, sometimes many kilometers away. The visible phenomenon, like the one in the photo, is known as lightning, while the electric shock is lightning.

On March 28, 2004, Hurricane Caterina attacked Brazil's coast by surprise. It is a huge storm, perhaps the most powerful in the history of the South Atlantic. A cyclone of this size, classified by some as the first hurricane category 1, is a very rare event in the South Atlantic.

The rainbow is caused by drops of water in the air. It is usually seen in the sky in the opposite direction of the Sun, near areas with rain or water sprayed in the waterfalls, which decomposes white light in its colors. In the brightest arc, the primary, which is often the only visible, the colors have red on its outer side.

NASA's SeaWIFS satellite records the color of the oceans from its orbit, following the changes in the climate and biosphere of our aquatic world. But even an ocean planet can have dust storms. From its advantageous position in space, other satellites have also captured images that have revealed storms that carry massive amounts of sand and dust across Earth's oceans.

This striking image of the waning quarter moon was recorded with a 24-inch telescope and a digital camera. Wonderfully detailed, especially along the "terminator" or shadow line between lunar night and day, this cropped version of the full image shows the northern polar region with its craters and the smooth and vast Mare Imbrium.

The great storms of the Earth can engender strange clouds, small but violent, known as tornadoes. Tornado clouds spin at hundreds of kilometers per hour, and when they reach the ground they are able to destroy almost everything in their path, leaving a long and narrow trail of destruction.

Crepuscular rays are light beams that seem to have their origin at a single point in the sky. They create an alternation of lights and shadows in the sky, and can be seen during sunset or sunrise, when there is a greater contrast between light and dark. In order for light rays to occur, they must encounter an obstacle, such as clouds or a geographical accident.

Geographical poles are known to the two points of the earth's surface that coincide with its axis of rotation: the North Pole and the South Pole. The geographical North of the Earth is at a geographical latitude of 90 degrees north of the equator. For its part, the geographical South Pole is 90 degrees south of the equator.

Atmosphere of the Earth Clouds, storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, rays, rainbows ... the atmosphere of the Earth presents a great variety of forms and phenomena that affect us. The air is a mixture of gases and, as such, is subject to the effects of expansion, density variation and displacement caused by temperature differences.

Despite its appearance, this cloud represents no danger. Suspended over a remote monastery in Sicily, Italy, the anvil shape of this cumulonimbus shows several classic features in the clouds. A cloud is made up of millions of tiny droplets of water and ice. The visible flattening of the lower part of the cloud was caused by a temperature drop in the lower atmosphere; above, a column of water saturated with water is forced to condense into drops of water.

The Sea of ​​Serenity, or Mare Serenitatis in Latin, is a lunar sea located east of Mare Imbrium and south of Mare Frigoris, on the face we can see from the Moon. Actually, what we call sea on our satellite has nothing to do with the terrestrial seas. The first observers of the sky in the Antiquity gave them the name of seas because from the Earth it is what they seemed, great extensions of water.

The Luna La Luna satellite, our satellite, is one of the main stars that travel the Earth's sky. It is also the first star on which humans have set foot. Thanks to this, to other spacecraft and, of course, to ground telescopes, we can present this spectacular collection of photos of the Moon.