Rare Clear Views A Selkirk Island, Chile story
Coasts
Water
April 19, 2009, could have been a rare clear view of the island, but some of the data are missing because of Landsat 7’s Scan Line Corrector (SLC) malfunction of May 2003. Landsat 8, which launched in February 2013, has been more fortunate in its relatively short time in orbit to capture at least three clear views of the island: on March 8, 2014, March 11, 2015, and January 11, 2017. Those three images look about the same except for subtle changes to the mountain shadows caused by a different sun angle at different times of year.
Location
Apr. 19, 2009, Landsat 7 (path/row 6/83) — Selkirk Island close-up
Mar. 8, 2014, Landsat 8 (path/row 6/83) — Selkirk Island close-up
Mar. 11, 2015, Landsat 8 (path/row 6/83) — Selkirk Island close-up
Jan. 11, 2017, Landsat 8 (path/row 6/83) — Selkirk Island close-up
Selkirk Island, Chile Additional Imagery & Stories
A Note on the Images
The Landsat images that are shown on Earthshots are combinations of three different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Typically, the images...
More Selkirk Cloudscapes
Since its launch in 1999, Landsat 7 has not again seen such nice vortices over Selkirk Island. A single vortex formed on March 25, 2000, from a simila...
Other Vortices
Selkirk Island is not the only place where Landsat has seen vortex streets. Other places where this phenomenon is common are nearby Robinson Crusoe Is...
Reflectivity of Water
Have you noticed that in these images, clouds look white but the ocean looks black? Both are made of the same substance, water—why would they appear a...