Bringing together imagery from many different satellites and astronaut missions, NASA's Earth Observatory publishes fantastic images with highly detailed descriptionss, feature articles and more.

Gathered here are some standout photographs from the collections in the Earth Observatory over the past years.

The East African volcano Nyiragongo accounts for 20 percent of all recorded eruptions in Africa. The volcano sits along the edge of the Western Rift, part of a giant crack in the Earth’s crust that runs for thousands of miles from the Middle East southward to central Africa. (IKONOS image ©2004 GeoEye)



The alpine lakes of the Tibetan Plateau are some of the most remote in the world. This mosaic of astronaut photographs, taken along a single International Space Station orbit track, depicts Lake Puma Yumco during the winter season. The lake is located at an elevation of 5,030 meters above sea level (16,503 feet), and is considered ultraoligotrophic, meaning that nutrient concentrations in both the water column and lake sediments are extremely low. The most striking feature of the image mosaic is the intricate ice block pattern on the lake surface. (NASA/JSC)



The Arabian Peninsula's Empty Quarter, known as Rub' al Khali, is the world's largest sand sea, holding about half as much sand as the Sahara Desert. The Empty Quarter covers 583,000 square kilometers (225,000 square miles), and stretches over parts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The Enhanced Thematic Mapper on NASA's Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of the Empty Quarter on August 26, 2001. (NASA/Robert Simmon, Landsat,USGS)



The Dasht-e Kevir, or Great Salt Desert, is the largest desert in Iran. It is primarily uninhabited wasteland, composed of mud and salt marshes covered with crusts of salt that protect the meager moisture from completely evaporating. (NASA/Landsat)

Even the most snow-covered place on Earth has patches of snow-free ground. In Antarctica, a series of parallel valleys lie between the Ross Sea and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Known as the Dry Valleys, they are swept free of snow by nearly relentless katabatic winds - cold, dry air that rolls downhill toward the sea from the high altitudes of the ice sheet. The Dry Valleys harbor a collection of glaciers and ice-covered lakes. This false-color image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite on November 29, 2000. (NASA/Jesse Allen, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)



Cheju Island, alternately known as Chejudo or Jejudo, is an oval-shaped volcanic landmass covering 1,845 square kilometers (712 square miles) off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Geologists estimate the island’s age at 2 million years, and archaeological finds suggest that people have lived on the island since prehistoric times. Today, Cheju is both a tourist attraction and home to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site. (NASA/Robert Simmon, Landsat,ETM+)



South of Khartoum, Sudan, where the White and Blue Nile Rivers join, a dizzying arrangement of irrigated fields stretches out across the state of El Gezira. The several bare-looking patches are small villages. This image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite on December 25, 2006. (NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)



Deriba Caldera is a geologically young volcanic structure located at the top of the Marra Mountains of western Sudan. The Marra Mountains are part of a large geologic feature known as the Darfur Dome. The dome appears to be the result of a mantle plume, which is a fixed “hotspot” in the Earth’s mantle (the layer of Earth below the crust). The mantle plume heated the crust from below, leading to uplift of the crust and providing a magma source for the extensive volcanism observed in the region. The 5-kilometer-wide Deriba Caldera was formed by explosive eruption of the Jebel Marra Volcano approximately 3,500 years ago. The volcano is considered dormant, rather than extinct, as hot springs and fumaroles (gas and steam vents) are still present. (NASA-JSC)



This image, captured on January 21, 2005, shows just how close this two icy giants came to each other. At upper left is the tip of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, while at bottom is the northernmost portion of the B-15A iceberg. The distance between them was less than 5 kilometers on this day. (NASA/USGS)



Green circles in the desert frequently indicate tracts of agriculture supported by center-pivot irrigation. The Al Khufrah Oasis in southeastern Libya (near the Egyptian border) is one of Libya’s largest agricultural projects, and is an easy-to-recognize landmark for orbiting astronauts aboard the International Space Station. (NASA/JSC)