A Showcase of Planet’s Image Gallery
If you’re a Planet customer — or you’re just a fan of pictures of Earth from space — you may have noticed some recent changes in our image gallery. In the past few weeks we’ve added dozens of new images featuring everything from tropical glaciers to fjord fog to the impact of the novel coronavirus:
We’ve also adjusted our image permissions, so gallery images are now licensed as creative commons “Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)”. This means you can share with others and incorporate them into non-commercial projects as long as you provide attribution.
Not only is the content of the gallery’s imagery exciting, but we’ve recently reconfigured our high-resolution SkySats and launched a handful of satellites into a lower orbit. These will provide imagery with a resolution up to 50 centimeters per pixel, giving you a clearer picture of Earth and making the gallery even more impressive!
Gallery Images: The Latest and Greatest
In this post, we’ve gathered some of our latest and greatest imagery from the gallery, to give you a small glimpse at what you can expect from the collection going forward.
In this PlanetScope series of images of the Green River near Ouray, Utah, the satellites faithfully captured details of the landscape through all four seasons: muddy water in the spring, almost black standing water in the wetlands in summer, colorful fall foliage and bright white snow and ice in winter. (Oh yeah — we can also share time series now! So we’re not limited to showing only single images or a single before and after pair.)
Narrow, well-defined spectral bands are an advantage in a remote sensing system, designed to accurately measure phenomenon on the Earth’s surface. As a nice side effect, it enhances the ability to show just how colorful our home planet is. One area that showcases this effect is the Keping Shan thrust belt in China’s far western Xinjiang province:
In this region, the Piqiang Fault cuts through a sequence of exposed rocks. Each color represents a different type of sedimentary rock, laid down over geological time, then folded and brought to the surface as Eurasia collided with a series of continental fragments and island arcs.
Of course, Planet’s Earth observation satellites aren’t limited to the small range of wavelengths of light visible to the human eye. They can also “see” features in near-infrared (wavelengths slightly longer wavelengths than the red we can see) which are critical for monitoring vegetation over time.
In this false-color (near infrared, red and green) SkySat image of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil individual rows of crops can be distinguished from one another:
In fact, the above image has a resolution of 50 centimeters per pixel, which became standard for SkySat on June 30, 2020.
In addition to near infrared, Planet’s newest generation of satellites squeezed in an extra band between the red and near-infrared bands. Called red edge, this band helps observers detect subtle changes in vegetation. Red edge is especially important in places with very dense canopies, like the tropical forests that surround Bayano Lake in Panama:
Having a full fleet of agile high-resolution satellites allows imaging of the same location multiple times per day. Four SkySats captured the comings and goings at a quay alongside the Emirates Steel Mill in Abu Dhabi at four different times — 10:53 am, 11:32 am, 1:38 pm and 1:50 pm local time (clockwise from upper left). All on a single day:
The care and feeding of Planet’s gallery is always a pleasure, since the Earth is so varied and ever-changing. There are no better examples of this constant change than the Earth’s volcanoes, where new landscapes are being born:
After part of Anak Krakatau collapsed on December 22, 2018 — creating a deadly tsunami — the island volcano continued to erupt. This sequence of SkySat images shows a lava flow filling the island’s central crater during the first half of 2020 — January 22, May 25 and June 13, 2020. The changes in color are the result of shifting lighting and atmospheric conditions.
At the opposite end of the volcanic spectrum from Anak Krakatau is Nyamuragira Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Krakatau’s lavas are thick and viscous, making the volcano prone to catastrophic explosions, Nyamuragira’s are relatively thin and runny. These fluid lavas bubble up from a lava lake and frequently re-surface the floor of the volcano’s summit crater:
Other phenomena reshape the landscape in less dramatic and more ephemeral ways. The Bighorn Fire burned through the mountains near Tucson, Arizona, leaving a dark gray burn scar where the invasive buffelgrass and native saguaro cactus previously thrived. Rust-colored stripes along the edges of the burn scar indicate where flame retardant was laid down to slow the fires spread:
Sometimes, we’ll just publish an image just because it’s cool. This image shows a stream emptying into Pangong Tso, a salty lake high up on the Tibetan Plateau. Rising lake levels appear to have drowned a pre-existing valley, leaving a sinuous bay along the shoreline:
The Earth is vast, intricate, and ever-changing. Planet’s satellites provide a glimpse into this complexity with a worldwide view. Our gallery allows us to share this with you. Please enjoy the view, and come back often, since we’ll continue to add pictures of current events, seasonal change and natural wonders — or sometimes something that just strikes our fancy.
