Some of the images in the Spuzzled game seem to be of some
strange other world. Surely they are not pictures of our own
Earth! The view of Earth from space is very different from the
view at ground level. We can really see the big picture. We can
see mountains and valleys, rivers, forests, lakes, farmlands,
and shorelines. We can see volcanoes erupting, wild fires
burning, and ice sheets forming and melting. Who or what made
these pictures? The Spuzzled images are from Landsat 7. Landsat
7 is in a polar orbit. That means it goes (nearly) over the
North Pole and the South Pole, so Earth turns underneath
Landsat. Landsat 7 has a very special Earth-observing instrument
called the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). It can "see"
features on the ground that are as small as 15 meters (49 feet)
across. So, it couldn't see a car, but it could probably see a
house. This instrument can colors of light than human eyes
cannot see. That is why the Landsat images seem so colorful.
They have been color enhanced to help ou