Triangles? Ovals? Who drew these giant shapes in the desert? Image captured July 16, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

What The Firehose?! A look at some of the more bizarre images of our planet

At Planet, our data reaches our computers in a continuous stream from our ground stations that we call The Firehose. Satellites beam down countless images a day of our Earth, and one of the great work perks at Planet is getting to see our stunning home from above. We get to see the towering mountains of Patagonia, the patterns in the deserts in Namibia, jewel-toned lakes in the plains of rural China — and then every once in a while, you see an image that just makes you say “HUH? What is that?” Here is a brief selection of images that made us do double takes.

Take for example, the banner image above. On the left you see an oval track which turns out to be Toyota’s Arizona Proving Ground — a test track to see how well cars hold up in the desert. ‘Oh, cool, a racetrack!’ you might think, but this is no ordinary race track. It’s a 10 mile loop and the longest dimension can fit 57 football fields stitched end to end. Enormous! And what’s that funky triangle off to the right? We here at Planet are some pretty good researchers and after some astute internet sleuthing (we use Google, Bing, and Wikimapia when searching for labels) we determined that the triangle is Luke AFB Auxiliary Airfield 4, which has been closed since the 1950s or 60s.

We have pictures of land that look as though they must have been made by humans:

This circle in the middle of the Sudanese desert is too perfect to not be made by people. Image captured November 1, 2015. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

And pictures of things made by humans that are made to look like nature:

The Palm Jumeirah is an artificial archipelago constructed in Dubai. Image captured January 19, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

Another artificial archipelago, the Durrat Al Bahrain, features atoll and fish shaped islands. Image captured June 6, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

We image land that looks like the ocean.

It took an excessive amount of Googling and some translation help for us to figure out that this Chinese facility makes chemical compounds like magnesium hydroxide, magnesium oxide, crude salt, and bromine. Image captured July 7, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

And water made to look like land.

Think big! The World is a neighboring archipelago to the Palms in Dubai. Image captured January 19, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

Sometimes, we see an image like this and are completely stumped as to what is going on.

We had to search to find out that Si Bani Yas island in the United Arab Emirates is an wildlife reserve in the Persian Gulf. Image captured August 24, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

A lovely abstract in the desert.

The Dead Sea Evaporation Ponds are used to extract salt from the lake water, but to me it reminds me of the original Macintosh logo. Image captured April 1, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

And one image where I actually said “What is that?!” out loud, much to the amusement of my coworkers around me.

Looks like a spaceship, right? But look closely, and you’ll spot the famous Ferrari logo at their theme park in Abu Dhabi. Look even closer and you can spot the IKEA logo next door. #branding. Image captured March 2, 2016. Image ©2016 Planet Labs, Inc. cc-by-sa 4.0.

At Planet, when we need a break, we don’t log on to Facebook — we trawl our seemingly endless supply of new Earth imagery. To see some of the staff favorites that made it out of the Firehose and onto the internet, check out Planet’s online imagery gallery.