This evening I stumbled across a large collection of satellite photos of Earth entitled “Our Earth as Art: A Landsat Perspective.” Each is a beautiful abstract image — that also happens to be a spectacular color photo of someplace on our planet.
There are approximately 130 such images available on the USGS website, which says of the images:
“Our Earth as Art: A Landsat Perspective” is a collection of spectacular satellite images acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite. These remarkable portraits of earth were selected for their aesthetic value. The color enhanced satellite images show astonishing patterns and abstractions of vivid colors and fantastic shapes. The collection was originally developed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Landsat program — the United States’ oldest land-surface observation satellite system that captures remotely sensed images of the earth’s land surface and surrounding coastal regions. A series of satellites have been launched since 1972, with Landsat 5 and 7 currently in orbit. Landsat is a dual-agency program between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.
This picture shows a series of rocky outcroppings in the Sahara Desert, near the Terkezi Oasis in the African nation of Chad (click for much larger PDF image):
