Looking at the Earth

This is a portrait of our planet as seen through the cameras of spacecraft, revealing sights hidden from Earth-bound eyes. Continent by continent, spectacular wonders – the Alps, Mount Fuji, the Andes, Africa’s Great Rift Valley – emerge in great sweeping panoramas. A mosaic of night-time images produces a breathtaking view of Europe, its cities marking clearly the growth of the Industrial Revolution. Ancient rivers under the Sahara reappear when radar penetrates the sand to disclose what lies below. We see the result of human hammering on the face of the Earth more clearly than ever before. An inland sea dying, floodwaters washing over lands denuded of natural foliage, a pattern of barren, dead land around Chernobyl, ozone leaking out of a hole over Antarctica – these are just some of the images from space that warn of trouble in the future.