While not as high as the Himalayas or Karakoram, the Sulaiman range boast some of the most complex tectonic structures in the world. As India moved northward, it began to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, wrenching the northwestern part of the Indian plate backwards into part of the Eurasian plate. The countervailing forces put the rocks of the Sulaiman range in a unique compressional vice, causing many of its faults to curve and stretch in convoluted ways.

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a scene on April 24, 2011, that highlights some of this tectonic complexity. Read more

NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon and Adam Voiland, with data courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Despite a recent decline in earthquakes, Ubinas Volcano erupted another ash plume on April 28, 2014. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) collected this false-color view of the area on the same day. Red in the image indicates vegetation. Read more

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data from the NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Caption by Robert Simmon.

A satellite image is more than a photo. It is a picture of the amount and type of energy reflected or emitted by the Earth and recorded by a satellite instrument. There are many ways to combine those measurements to create an image, and each combination provides different insights.

The spectacular exposed geology of northwestern China offers an ideal landscape for illustrating how satellite measurements can identify minerals from afar. In satellite imagery, this area has three different sedimentary rock layers that are visible as rainbow stripes on a series of ridges. The Piqiang Fault has split the ridgeline, so the colored layers are offset by about three kilometers (two miles). All of the images on this page were made from data acquired on February 24, 2005, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Read more

NASA image by Robert Simmon with ASTER data. Caption by Holli Riebeek with information and review provided by David Mayer, Robert Simmon, and Michael Abrams.