Satellite Photography: Earth as a Work of Art (22 photos)

NASA has asked the public to vote for their favorite images from more than 120 images collected in the "Earth as Artwork" collection. These satellite images have been collected over the past 40 years, and they truly resemble works of art.







1. The winner of the vote was this image, nicknamed "Van Gogh from Space" – the image resembles the Dutch artist's famous painting "Starry Night." The photo shows the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)

2. Second Place: Yukon River Delta.

Numerous lakes, swamps, and ponds are scattered throughout this Yukon Delta in southwest Alaska. One of the largest river deltas in the world, it is protected by the Yukon National Wildlife Refuge. The waterways appear to be blood vessels enveloping an organ. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



3. Third Place: The Meandering Mississippi.

Small, square-shaped towns, fields, and pastures surround the peaceful meanders of the Mississippi River, the largest river system in North America. Countless lakes and tributaries line the river south of Memphis. Tennessee, on the border between Arkansas and Mississippi. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



4. Fourth Place: Algerian Abstractionism.

What appear to be streaks of pale yellow paint against a mosaic of blurred colors are actually ridges of windblown sand that make up the Erg Iguidi, a region of constantly shifting sand dunes that stretches from Algeria to Mauritania in northwest Africa. The erg is one of several Saharan ergs, or sand seas, in which individual dunes are often more than 500 meters in both width and height. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



5. Fifth Place: Lake Eyre.

The scary face in this image is actually the unflooded portions of the shallow Lake Eyre in desert South Australia. Lake Eyre is Australia's lowest point and the country's largest lake when full. However, in the last 150 years, it has filled completely only three times. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



6. Siberian Ribbons

Bright colors and strange shapes merge in this image, which could easily look like a work of abstract art or an illustration for a fantasy story. This labyrinth of exotic features lies along the edge of the Chainskaya Bay (bright blue semicircle) in northeastern Siberia. Two major rivers, the Chaun and the Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn empties into the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and swamps are found throughout the region, created by depressions left by melting glaciers. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



7. The Empty Quarter.

White clouds cast beige shadows across the Rub' al-Khali desert, or Empty Quarter, near the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Wind-blown sand lines are characteristic of the Great Sand Desert, and the Rub' al-Khali is the largest desert of its kind in the world. In the center lies the city of Sharurah, Saudi Arabia. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



8. Icy Stars.

Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of ice in the North Sea near Baffin Island at Canada's North Pole. Sea ice often begins as glacial suet—a thin layer of ice crystals on the ocean's surface. As temperatures drop, the suet thickens and coalesces into chunks of harder ice. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



9. Ganges River Delta.

The Ganges River forms a vast delta where it flows into the Bay of Bengal. The delta is covered by a swampy forest known as the Sundarbans, home to the rare Bengal tiger. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



10. Belcher Islands.

Like strokes of pink and green paint, the Belcher Islands meander across Canada's blue Hudson Bay. The islands' only inhabitants live in the small town of Sanikiluaq, near the upper end of the island's midsection. Despite their green color, these rocky islands are too rugged to support sufficient vegetation. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



11. The Himalayas.

The soaring snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalayas create a jagged white and red pattern between the major rivers in southwestern China. The Himalayas consist of three parallel mountain ranges that together stretch for more than 2,900 km. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



12. The Rocky Mountain Basin.

What appears to be a bright red brushstroke is actually a play of light and clouds in the Rocky Mountains. Part of the Rocky Mountain Basin, a valley that stretches from Montana, USA, to the southern Yukon Territory, runs through them. Low clouds filled part of the basin near the border between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The reflective nature of the clouds, coupled with the low position of the sun, created this striking contrast. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



13. During the last ice age, Akimiski Island in Canada's James Bay lay beneath vast glaciers that pressed downward with incredible force. As the climate changed, the ice began to melt, and Akimiski Island began to emerge. The island is emerging from the water slowly but surely. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



14. Desert Patterns.

Ribbons of Saharan sand dunes appear to glow at sunset. These patterns are part of the Erg Cheh, a remote sand sea in southwestern Algeria, Africa, where winds constantly reshape the landscape of large, linear sand dunes. The word "erg" comes from the Arabic word for "sand dune field." (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



15. Ice Waves.

Along Greenland's southeast coast, an exquisite network of fjords pushes glacial ice into the Atlantic Ocean. During the summer melt season, new icebergs join chunks of sea ice and older icebergs, and northern currents sometimes twist them into incredible shapes. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



16. Icelandic Tiger

This sketch of Iceland's northern coast resembles a tiger's head, striped in orange, black, and white. The tiger's mouth is Eyjafjörður, a deep fjord jutting into the mainland between steep mountains. The name means "island fjord" and comes from a tiny teardrop-shaped islet called Hrisi. The port city of Akureyri lies near the narrow end of a fjord. It is the second largest city in Iceland after Reykjavik. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



17. Caribbean Luxury.

The Caicos Islands in the northern Caribbean are a popular tourist destination with beautiful beaches, clear waters, scuba diving, and luxury resorts. The islands lie primarily along the northern perimeter of Caicos Bank, a shallow limestone platform formed by sand, seagrass, and coral reefs covering 6,140 square kilometers. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



18. Byrd Glacier.

Truly a river of ice – Antarctica's fast-flowing Byrd Glacier flows through the Transantarctic Mountains at a rate of 0.8 km per year. This glacier, over 180 km long, flows from the polar plateau (left) to the Ross Ice Shelf (right). Areas of exposed rock are highlighted in red. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



19. Vanishing Lake Disappointment.

Surrounded by sand dunes, Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake in one of Western Australia's most remote regions. An early explorer supposedly named the lake in 1897 after seeing numerous inlets leading to the lake, but unfortunately, the water was undrinkable. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



20. The Lake District in the UK is a popular holiday destination

This is a region of picturesque mountains and long, narrow lakes. Most of the lakes have U-shaped valleys carved by glaciers during the last ice age. Morecambe Bay below the Lake District opens into the Irish Sea. The coarse sands of the intertidal zone and silt flats are notorious for their quicksand and tides, which are said to move faster than a galloping horse. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)



21. Great Barrier Reef.

What might be mistaken for dinosaur bones are just isolated reefs. These make up the Great Barrier Reef, the largest tropical coral reef system in the world. The reef stretches for more than 2,000 kilometers along the coast of Queensland, Australia. It supports a stunningly complex and vibrant diversity of marine life and is the largest structure on the planet made of living organisms. (Landsat/NASA/Rex Features)