Earth as Art

The USGS has put together a collection of beautiful satellite images entitled Earth as Art and the results are stunning. The image above was acquired from Landsat 7 and depicts the Terkezi Oasis in the Sahara Desert region of Chad. The purple outcrops of bedrock are a stark contrast to the surrounding desert and look like they shield certain areas from sand deposition; perhaps that is why this area is referred to as an oasis. I was not able to find any information on what band combinations were used to generate this picture (a quick overview of "bands" for those unfamiliar with satellite imagery). A quick search on Google Earth shows that the rocks do actually have a purplish tinge to them, so perhaps it is composited from a visible light band combination and just heavily edited for aesthetic purposes. If you are interested in the full collection of Earth as Art the free e-book can be found here.

Seeing as how there is a plethora of satellite data freely available on the USGS database, I am very interested in creating my own artistic pieces from data acquired around the globe. Playing around with band combinations often yields images with pretty wild colors. I think cool aesthetic compositions like this are an excellent way to generate interest in earth processes for the general public and, more importantly, for young people.

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