About this dataset

These images show Earth's surface and clouds in false colors. The images might look a little funny, sort of like a TV picture that needs to be fixed. That's because the images include more than just the red, green, and blue light that our eyes can see, but also infrared light. Infrared light is invisible to our eyes, but not to satellites. NASA uses satellites in space to gather images like these over the entire planet every day. Scientists use satellite sensors to measure how much infrared light Earth reflects back up into space. By assigning colors (red, green, or blue) to measurements of infrared light, we can see and understand the resulting pictures -- called "false-color images." In the false-color images available in NEO, areas with plants look bright green while deserts look tan. Cold things appear blue: the colder something is, the brighter blue it will look. Ice and snow on the ground show up as bright turquoise. Depending upon how high they are and how cold they are, clouds' colors range from white, to baby blue, to bright turquoise. Notice how water and clouds in false-color images look very different than they do in true-color images. Water is very dark, almost black, which makes it much easier to see lakes or flooded lands.