Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The September 2025 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking ...

On May 28, 2025, the peaceful town of Blatten, Switzerland, was even more quiet than usual. Almost all of the 300 residents had been evacuated due to local geologists and glaciologists fearing the ...

Update on September 16, 2025: This Landsat 8 image shows the Rokan River on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Congratulations to Tamer Kurtman for being the first reader to name the river and its ...

Update on August 19, 2025: This Landsat 8 image shows Múlajökull, a surge-type piedmont glacier in central Iceland bordered by colorful lakes. Congratulations to Kim Jack for being the first reader to ...

AVUELO has encountered one of the wettest and cloudiest dry seasons in memory. After a series of great acquisitions over core and important areas, our airborne science has stood down for several days ...

Satellite images of Earth at night have been a curiosity for the public and a tool of fundamental research for at least 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have ...

The night side of Earth twinkles with light. The first thing to stand out is the cities. “Nothing tells us more about the spread of humans across the Earth than city lights,” asserts Chris Elvidge, a ...

For a short time after a snowfall, glaciers are like blank white canvases. But it’s not long before the snowy surfaces are painted over with coats of dust, soot, ash, pollen, salt, sand, rocks, and ...

For 20 years, astronauts have been shooting photos of Earth from the space station. Like everything the astronauts do, they are trained for this job. And like everything they do, there is purpose and ...

Chances are, you have a camera near you as you read this—in the smart phone in your pocket or on the tablet or computer you’re using to view this page. Some of you might have a 35 mm film or digital ...

Satellite images are like maps: they are full of useful and interesting information, provided you have a key. They can show us how much a city has changed, how well our crops are growing, where a fire ...

In January 2016 in Kenya, the conditions were just right for an outbreak of Rift Valley fever. A strong El Niño on the other side of the world had brought higher temperatures and a wetter-than-normal ...