Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Europe's Sentinel-2A Satellite
From the Rocky Mountains on the left to the Prairies on the right, Sentinel-2A takes us over the southern part of the Canadian province of Alberta, with part of British Columbia in the lower left.

In this image spanning some 265 km, we can see the northwest—southeast ranges of the Rockies. Moving west to east, the mountains peter out to the Canadian Prairies, with the city of Calgary in the transition zone between the two landscapes (upper-middle).

This area has naturally occurring ‘chernozem’—black soil—and is part of one of two chernozem belts in the world—the other stretching across part of eastern Europe and Russia. This fertile soil produces a high agricultural yield, evident by the numerous fields on the right side of the image.

A section of the Trans-Canada Highway is also featured, entering Calgary in a direct line from the east, and then snaking into the Rockies towards the west. Spanning over 8000 km, this coast-to-coast road travels through all 10 of Canada’s provinces and is one of the longest routes of its type.

In the upper left we can see the long, curved glacial Lake Minnewanka. Fed mainly by the Cascade River, a dam built in the 1940s raised the lake by about 30 m and submerged a resort village, as well as the previous dam built in 1912. Today, it is a popular destination for scuba divers to explore the underwater dam.

Near the western end of the lake lies the town of Banff—the site of next week’s 4th Swarm Science Meeting and North-American CryoSat Science Meeting. The two conferences taking place concurrently bring together scientists to discuss the latest results coming from the three-satellite Swarm mission on Earth’s magnetic field, as well as new information on Earth’s changing ice masses from the CryoSat satellite.

This image, also featured on the Earth from Space video program, was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite on August 31, 2016.

Credit: Copyright contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA
Release Date: March 17, 2017

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Rome, Italy | Sentinel-2A Satellite | ESA
Rome and its surroundings are pictured in this image from the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite, captured on January 17, 2016.

The Tiber River snakes down from the north, and is surrounded by agricultural fields in the upper right before entering the city. It then makes its way west, entering into the Mediterranean Sea at the town of Ostia. Near its terminus, we can see the runways of the Fiumicino Airport.

Long, sandy beaches are visible along the coastline, with the port of Civitavecchia visible in the upper left. This is a major point of ferry connection to many Mediterranean islands, such as Sardinia and Sicily.

The lakes visible are Bracciano near the top of the image, with the smaller Martignano nearby. Near the lower right, we see lakes Albano and Nemi in the so-called ‘Castelli Romani’—a group of small cities in the Alban Hills. Frascati is also in this area, home city of ESA’s ESRIN establishment.

March 25th—marks the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

This international agreement is considered one of the most important treaties in today’s European Union, as it proposed the reduction of custom duties and the establishment of a customs union, as well as a single market for goods, labour and services. It was also responsible for the establishment of the European Commission, as well as other economic European organisations.

The Treaty was signed on the Capitoline Hill in Rome’s historic center.

This image is featured on the "Earth from Space" video program.

Rome is a special comune (named Comune di Roma Capitale) and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region.

Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA
Release Date: March 24, 2017

+Samantha Cristoforetti
+Luca Parmitano
+Paolo Nespoli
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+European Space Agency, ESA
+European Union

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Central-eastern Brazil | Sentinel-2A Satellite | ESA
Sentinel-2A takes us over central-eastern Brazil—more specifically where the Bahia, Tocantins and Goiás states meet.

Here we can see a large, flat plateau blanked with fields benefiting from rich soils and an apparent abundance of water, before falling off into a green, hilly valley (left). The straight lines in the image are roads, such as the highway running in a nearly straight line from the centre-top to bottom of the image.

The area is particularly known for soybean production. The country’s soybean output has increased by more than 3000% since the 1970s, and Brazil is the second largest global producer of soybeans after the US.

Other crops in this area include corn, coffee and cotton.

A distinctive feature in this image is the circles—mainly at the center. These shapes were created by a central-pivot irrigation system, where a long water pipe rotates around a well at the center of each plot. The varying colors show different types of crop, or different stages of growth.

The two-satellite Sentinel-2 mission is designed to monitor changing lands, including crop type and health. While the first satellite has been in orbit since 2015, its Sentinel-2B twin was launched on March 7. Together, the satellites will provide new images of Earth’s land surfaces every five days.

This image, also featured on the "Earth from Space" video program, was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite on August 8, 2016.

Credit & Copyright: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA , CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Release Date: April 14, 2017

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Sundarbans web, Bangladesh | Sentinel-2A satellite | ESA
The Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over the very eastern part of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, in this natural-color image. A region comprising southern Bangladesh and a small part of the Indian state of west Bengal, the whole area of the Sundarbans incorporates some 10,000 sq km, consisting of mangrove and swamp forests.

The region of the Sundarbans appears in dark shades of green in this image, while the adjacent areas in brighter colors are densely populated and dominated by agriculture.

Sundarbans is the world’s largest single chunk of tidal halophytic mangrove forest. Generally, fresh water is required for plants, but these mangrove forests can also thrive in saline water.

This area lies on the Bay of Bengal, the world’s largest bay. A number of large rivers—including the Ganges, its tributaries and various other rivers, all flow into its waters, forming the Ganges–Brahmaputra Delta.

The erosional forces of the sea and wind along the coast continuously mold the landscape, together with the huge amounts of silt and other sediments, deposited in the countless estuaries, visible in the water. Distinct throughout the image, the network of these estuaries, tidal rivers and creeks, criss-crossed by numerous channels, enclose flat, densely forested, marshy islands and agricultural plots.

Most of the delta is composed of alluvial soils made up of fine sediment that settles to the bottom as river currents slow in the estuary. The soil has large amounts of minerals and nutrients, ideal for agriculture.

These fertile floodplains host jute, tea and rice—the major crops grown in the Ganges Delta, visible as brighter patches on the land areas in the right part of the image. Fishing is also an important activity, and a major source of food for many of the inhabitants of the various towns, which we can see along the brighter areas.

The Sundarbans National Park, established in 1984 and a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a core region within the Bengal Tiger Reserve. The almost extinct Bengal tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh and is considered the second largest tiger in the world.

This image—also featured on the "Earth from Space" video program—was captured by Sentinel-2A on March 18, 2016.

Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA
Image Date: March 18, 2016.
Release Date: July 15, 2016

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Barents bloom | Sentinel-2A Satellite | European Space Agency
Although it may appear as a watercolor painting, this image is a natural-color capture of a plankton bloom in the Barents Sea by the Sentinel-2A satellite. The Barents Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia with vast majority of it lying in Russian territorial waters.[

Plankton, the most abundant type of life found in the ocean, are microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea. They are sometimes referred to as ‘the grass of the sea’ because they are the basic food on which all other marine life depends.

Since plankton contain photosynthetic chlorophyll pigments, these simple organisms play a similar role to terrestrial ‘green’ plants in the photosynthetic process. Plankton are able to convert inorganic compounds such as water, nitrogen and carbon into complex organic materials.

With their ability to ‘digest’ these compounds, they are credited with removing as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as their counterparts on land. As a result, the oceans have a profound influence on climate. Since plankton are a major influence on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and are sensitive to environmental changes, it is important to monitor and model them into calculations of future climate change.

Although some types of plankton are individually microscopic, the chlorophyll they use for photosynthesis collectively tints the color of the surrounding ocean waters, providing a means of detecting these tiny organisms from space with dedicated sensors, such as Sentinel-2’s multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands.

Some algae species are toxic or harmful. If they surge out of control during optimal blooming conditions they can exhaust the water of oxygen and suffocate larger fish. This phenomenon has dramatically increased in recent decades, and is particularly dangerous to fish farms because the fish cannot flee affected areas. Early warning of harmful blooms from satellites can help to prevent fish farmers from losing their stock, as it happened in Chile recently.

This image, also featured on the "Earth from Space" video program, was captured by Sentinel-2A on June 30.

Credit & Copyright Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA
Image Date: June 30, 2016
Release Date: September 9, 2016

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Gibson Desert, Australia | Sentinel-2A Satellite | ESA
The Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over the Gibson Desert in Western Australia in this false-color image. Covering an area of over 150,000 sq km, the desert sports gravel terrains covered by desert grasses, as well as red sandy plains and dunefields. A drought in the 1980s forced the indigenous Pintupi people to the central-eastern area of the desert, where they made contact with Australian society in what is believed to be one of the last first-contact events in Australia.

On the left side of this false-color image we see many strange shapes in varying shades of blue. These are the remnants of areas purposefully burned by the Pintupi people to encourage plant growth or drive game animals into the open.

Many of the Pintupi people moved to settlements when the British military began testing missile in the region in the 1950s. The areas that they had burned became overgrown, becoming even more susceptible to manmade or lightning-caused fires, which then burn out of control, leaving behind large burn scars.

In the lower-right corner of the image we can make out a circular structure. This is the Connolly Basin impact crater, believed to have been formed around 60 million years ago. Some 9 km across, the rim rises 25–30 m above the crater’s basin.

This image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite on Christmas Day in 2015, and is also featured on the "Earth from Space" video program.

Credit & Copyright contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2015), processed by ESA
Release Date: November 18, 2016

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+European Space Agency, ESA 

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