Astronauts often return to Earth with a renewed appreciation for the complexity and beauty of our planet, a phenomenon sometimes called the overview effect. While most of us will never be lucky enough to see our home from space, natural-color imagery collected by Earth-observing satellites offers the next best thing.
The natural-color image above shows an intricate push-and-pull that recently played out between weather systems, clouds, and dust off the coast of Western Australia. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired the image on October 21, 2019.
The common thread connecting the dust and the curving clouds was a powerful thunderstorm churning over the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory