Beautiful Earth

If you see something that is visually impressive as you cruise over the planet, create a placemark, insert the screen capture in it and also include the image in your post. One hint: search the historical imagery for the area and you may find a better view. Right click and chose "Snapshot view" to show the perspective and time you want to show. I'll start off with an image of rice paddies in eastern China. 

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Patterns in China_01.kmz (855 B)

Cool find!

Here is something similar in Canada...

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Hillside Mosaic.kmz (725 B)

China, with the worlds greatest population, still has many wild places. The Taklamakan Desert is one.

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Complex Dune patterns in Taklamakan Desert.kmz (937 B)

I haven't been able to find a name for this range in Xinjiang, China yet.

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Striking patterns in mountains China.kmz (873 B)

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.



The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.



Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.



The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.



It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”



― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Here is my favorite version of two Sagan clips spliced together and his story of the Pale Blue Dot.

 

NOTE: When you download the attachment turn on the Weather...Clouds Layer to see clouds currently in the skies of earth. Also turn off all other layers.

Orion; Earth with clouds,Pacific Ocean and Australia and New Zealand; Hyades and Pleiades in Taurus.

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Pale blue dot.kmz (1.86 KB)

If you want to hear him say it:

This image of elephants in Chad's Zakouma National Park is from a special layer overlaid onto Google earth's other imagery ( Gallery > National Geographic Magazine > Africa Megaflyover ). You can find lots of interesting imagery and descriptions from J Michael Fay in this layer. Not taken from a satellite, but a low and slow flying single engine plane, it is some of the most detailed imagery on Google earth's globe.

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Elephants in Chad.kmz (676 B)

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Arctic soil patterns.kmz (817 B)

Azure Blue Lake.kmz (703 B)

Dry wash in the Gobi Desert almost look like veins

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Gobi Dry-wash Art.kmz (730 B)

Sol

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Soil patterns in the Russian Arctic.kmz (813 B)

@ Soil Patterns in the Russian Arctic:

Amazing stuff! Worth zooming out a bit for a broader view, as well. I can't imagine what this must look like at ground level. Don't suppose I'll be around long enough for Google Tundra View (Pegman in a mosquito net hat, I dare say.)

Too bad there's no historical imagery to compare the effects of warming against.

Those Arctic rectangular ponds and earth patterns are the result of  Polygon Ice Wedges  in permafrost regions.  

Actually, your eyes were probably fooled. The living cacti are nearly vertical to the satellite view and blend into the landscape very easily. The "cacti" you see here are really the living plants' distinctive shadows.

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Saguaro cacti Sonoran Desert AZ.kmz (708 B)

May 4, 2015 22:29:18 GMT Hill said:

Actually, your eyes were probably fooled. The living cacti are nearly vertical to the satellite view and blend into the landscape very easily. The "cacti" you see here are really the living plants' distinctive shadows.

    A neat thing I noticed are what appear to be animal trails between many of the cacti.  I think it really points up the level of reliance of the local fauna on the Saguaro and the scrub   plants!

This is one of my favorite views of one of the places I've hiked to. My wife and I loved the Tetons views, hiking the trails, canoeing the lakes, and photographing what we saw. We made many trips here. The highest peak is The Grand, the valley is the North Fork of Cascade Canyon, and the small lake is Lake Solitude.
Grand_Tetons_View_01.kmz (654 B)



I never was there at night, but it must be quite a sight, seen here through the eye of the Time Slider.

Wow! These are all wonderful finds.  Thanks for starting this, Hill.  You're right, some of the most beautiful examples are in past imagery, before the color became more realistic.  This is still one of my favorites, Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter.  Image is from 1/25/2011.

         

Empty Quarter SA.kmz (770 B)

Cut Agate Patterns near Hanksville Utah.kmz (709 B)

Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world. 

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Salar de Uyuni.kmz (768 B)

A bit of the watershed draining the "Cradle of Humanity" Mesopotamia on the Iran side of the border.




Watershed Trees.kmz (876 B)

Mixture Of Colors Mongolia.kmz (712 B)

St Vincent Island.kmz (736 B)
I think God used a huge paintbrush here.

Wicked Sand Dunes Mali.kmz (718 B)

simply awesome, each picture is simply breathtaking. 

There is undoubtedly some color caused by filters here, but it centers on a beautiful star dune. This type of dune occurs where winds blow from many directions.

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Sahara star dunes_Libya.kmz (680 B)

                A strip of 2010 imagery in the Western Desert of Egypt.  

    

     

                                                   Lake Powell, Utah.

           


Lake Powell.kmz (724 B)

Braided River New Zealand.kmz (804 B)

This masterpiece is courtesy of the estuary of the Dangerous River near Yakutat Alaska:

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Silt Art.kmz (691 B)

...or flag somewhere in Russia.



Simply pleasure for the eye:




green velvet curtain.kmz (816 B)

thanks for thread Hill after Keyhole Art/Google Art!

related from this board:
Pareidolia in Google Earth by TomKjeldsen

...

p.s.: I have already posted this to OpenForum by the time I had no info on existence of this thread.
following link to post, you can read Diane9247's impression.