Daily Overview

One regular dose of Earth from above

New Overviews are posted regularly on Instagram — follow @dailyoverview to see them as soon as they go up.

Tanjung Perak

-7.184000°,112.721167° - Vantor

This Overview captures cargo ships and tankers moving through Tanjung Perak, the main port in Surabaya, Indonesia. Recent expansion and dredging here has deepened the waters to 16 meters (52.5 feet) and enabled a larger generation of containers ships to pass through safely. The facility’s principal exports are sugar, tobacco, and coffee.

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

33.942500°,-118.408056° - Nearmap

Los Angeles International Airport, commonly referred to as LAX, handled more than 88 million passengers in 2019. That staggering total made it the third busiest airport in the world last year. LAX serves as a hub for more passenger airlines than any other airport in the United States and is also the only airport to rank among the top five U.S. airports for both passenger and cargo traffic.

Stockholm

59.329444°,18.068611° - Vantor

Stockholm is the capital and largest city in Sweden with a population of 1.6 million people in its urban area. The city is spread across fourteen islands and is known as one of the world’s cleanest cities. This recognition is primarily based on the Stockholm's significant focus on environmental issues in its budget, its thoughtful urban planning, and its decision to be fossil fuel free by the year 2050.

Brøndby Haveby

55.637185°,12.399623° - Vantor

Brøndby Haveby is a residential community located just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. Houses with large front yards are centered around cul-de-sacs, providing urban dwellers the opportunity to live outside the city and grow small subsistence or hobby crops during the summer months.

Chilean Coast Range

-24.737494°,-70.565057° - Vantor

The Chilean Coast Range is a mountainous stretch that runs along the Pacific Ocean in Chile. It extends 1,900 miles (3,100 km) from north to south, and this Overview captures a section near the city of Antofagasta. The highest point in the Chilean Coast Range is Cerro Vicuña Mackenna, which peaks at 10,217 feet (3,114 m).

Central Park

40.782222°,-73.965278° - Vantor

Central Park in New York City spans 843 acres — or 6% of the borough of Manhattan. One of the most influential innovations in the park's design was its "separate circulation" systems for pedestrians, horseback riders, and automobiles. This concealed "crosstown" commercial traffic in sunken roadways (known as "transverses" today), and densely planted shrub belts in order to maintain a rustic ambiance.

Guelb Moghrein Mine

19.746792°,-14.448051° - Vantor

Two circular tailings ponds can be seen at the Guelb Moghrein Mine in Akjoujt, Mauritania. Tailings ponds are dam systems engineered to hold the waste and byproducts of mining operations. In 2015, the Guelb Moghrein Mine produced 45,001 tons of copper and 64,007 ounces of gold.

Madrid

40.383333°,-3.716667° - Vantor

Madrid is the capital and most populous city of Spain, with nearly 6.8 million people living in its metropolitan area. The city has some modern architecture, but it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighborhoods and streets – a few of which date back to medieval times. This weekend, residents began walking outside for the first time in several weeks as Spain’s coronavirus lockdown – one of the toughest in Europe – was eased slightly.

Åland Islands

60.155955°,20.299564° - Planet

The Åland Islands are an archipelago located in the Baltic Sea of Finland. The chain comprises 300 habitable islands, 80 of which are inhabited, and roughly 6,200 skerries and desolate rocks. The province is autonomous, demilitarized and the smallest region of Finland, constituting 0.51% of its land area — 610 square miles (1,580 square km) — and 0.54% of its population, with nearly 30,000 residents.

Delray Beach

26.475548°,-80.156470° - Vantor

This Overview shows residential development in Delray Beach, Florida. Because many cities in the state contain master-planned communities, often built on top of waterways in the latter half of the twentieth century, there are a number of intricate designs that are visible from above. According to the 2010 Census, 20.4% of the city’s homes were vacant.

Port of Los Angeles Ships

33.727148°,-118.154945° - Vantor

Oil tankers, cargo ships, and cruise liners are moored at the Port of Los Angeles in California. The facility is still open despite the COVID-19 pandemic, but is operating at about 80% of normal traffic and is sheltering ships normally at sea. Reports from this week show that dozens of additional oil tankers have anchored outside the port along the California coast outside the with nowhere to offload their product. In March of 2020, 449,568 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containerized cargo moved through the port, down from 650,977 TEUs in March 2019.

Athens

37.990712°,23.746807° - Costas Spathis

Check out this incredible drone photo of Athens, Greece. As the capital and largest city in the country, it’s metropolitan area is home to 3.7 million residents. This shot captures the grid plan of the Gyzi area.

Pinal Airpark

32.505891°,-111.330164° - Vantor

Pinal Airpark is located in Marana, Arizona. Historically, the facility has been used as a boneyard for hundreds of commercial aircraft because the area's dry, desert climate reduces corrosion of the planes’ metal. However in recent weeks, Pinal has also stored more than a dozen more planes that have been grounded by airlines due to extreme reduction of flights during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Euphrates River Farms

34.826110°,40.623241° - Vantor

Agricultural villages surround the Euphrates River in the Abu Kamal District of Syria. This area is part of the “Fertile Crescent” — a large region spanning parts of present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt — where settled farming first emerged more than 10,000 years ago. In addition to plants like figs, peas, lentils and chickpeas, this region also domesticated animals including cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, cats and geese. This image was featured in our story, "Eating Away at Earth."

Solar Pandas

39.973222°,113.484361° - Vantor

Two pandas are formed by solar panels at the Panda Green Energy power plant in Datong, Shanxi Province, northern China. Built in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program, this solar farm covers roughly 1,500 acres and includes an education center that teaches children about sustainable and renewable energy.

Grand Canyon National Park

36.300000°,-112.600000° - Planet

The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in northwestern Arizona, USA. It is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and as much as 6,093 feet (1,857 m) deep. Although Grand Canyon National Park is currently closed due to COVID-19, the Grand Canyon is the most-photographed natural landmark on Instagram.

USNS Comfort

40.768102°,-73.999844° - Vantor

The USNS Comfort is docked in New York City. We’d like to take a moment to recognize all of the healthcare workers around the world for their bravery and dedication in combatting COVID-19. Thank you for everything that you do to keep us safe. The USNS Comfort is a U.S. Navy hospital ship that arrived in New York City on March 30th and began seeing COVID-19 patients on April 6th. The ship has 1,000 hospital beds, 500 of which will be used for severe coronavirus cases — taking some of the burden off of New York City hospitals.

Vatican City

41.902207°,12.455288° - Vantor

Today is Easter Sunday, and while St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City would normally be packed for the Pope’s Easter Service, it is empty. The Vatican, like Italy, is in lockdown to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. This Overview was captured years before quarantine went into effect, but still illustrates the quiet of a normally bustling cultural attraction. Pope Francis’ Easter Homily was streamed live today from St. Peter’s Basilica to millions around the world.

London At Night

51.507222°,-0.127500° - NASA

London at night with the River Thames visible through its center. As the capital and most populous city in Great Britain, London is also one of the world’s leading travel destinations. In a typical year, more than 65 million visitors come to the city.

Pivot Irrigation Fields

37.631920°,-100.706842° - Vantor

Pivot irrigation fields cover the landscape north of Copeland, Kansas, USA. Powered by electric motors, lines of sprinklers rotate 360 degrees to evenly irrigate crops.