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.

Michigan Tailings

46.408653°,-87.530031° - Maxar Technologies

Tailings - the waste and byproducts from mining operations - are pumped into the Gribbens Basin next to the Empire and Tilden iron ore mines in Negaunee, Michigan, USA. Here, the materials are mixed with water to create a sloppy form of mud known as “slurry” that is pumped through magnetic separation chambers to increase the mine’s total output. For a sense of scale, this Overview shows approximately one square mile of the basin.

Montreal Stadium

45.558000°,-73.552000° - Maxar Technologies

Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Canada was constructed for the 1976 Olympic Games. The stadium is home to the city's soccer and football teams and also features the world's largest inclined tower (574 feet). Hope all of our followers in Canada had a wonderful Canada Day yesterday!

Crater Lake

42.950000°,-122.100000° - Maxar Technologies

My favorite destination on this trip was Crater Lake in Oregon. The lake's awe-inspiring, deep blue water sits in a crater that was formed 7,700 years ago by the collapse of a volcano. Rain and snowfall compensate for any evaporation as no rivers flow into or out of the crater. At 1,943 feet (592 m), the lake is the deepest in the United States. Happy Independence Day from Daily Overview!

Soybean fields

-12.366667°,-44.966667° - Maxar Technologies

Soybeans fields straddle the border of São Domingos and São Desidério, Brazil. In 2014, Brazil became the world’s top producer of the crop with a harvest of 90 million metric tons.

Arizona State Prison Complex - Perryville

33.470556°,-112.441667° - Maxar Technologies

The Arizona Department of Corrections facility in Goodyear, Arizona is surrounded by fields of lettuce, cabbage, and red potatoes. The prison holds 2,382 inmates across eight housing units (only one is pictured here). This Overview is part of a collaborative photo essay that we just released with Fusion to detail how prisons have become a part of the American landscape, often in plain sight. Check out the full story .

Desert Shores Community

36.210784°,-115.267040° - Maxar Technologies

The Desert Shores Community in Las Vegas, Nevada contains 3,351 units and four man-made lakes.

Mussel nurseries

42.576312°,-8.859047° - Maxar Technologies

Mussel cultivation in the Ría de Arousa saline estuary off the coast of Galicia, Spain is the highest in the world. Floating rafts contain the nurseries where the mollusks grow on ropes until they are large enough to harvest. Mussel production has thrived here because there is an usually high concentration of phytoplankton in the water, providing the mussels with a protein-rich diet.

Coal trains

42.082523°,-102.890046° - Maxar Technologies

Coal trains - some full, others empty - idle in a railyard next to a pivot irrigation circle in Alliance, Nebraska, USA. The city is located in the Powder River Basin - one of the world’s largest coal-mining areas - and serves as a stopping point for trains en route to power plants in the Midwest and Southern parts of the country.

The Pentagon

38.870989°,-77.055961° - Maxar Technologies

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia, USA. The building has five sides, five floors above ground, and five ring corridors on each floor that have a combined length of 17.5 miles.

Launch Pad 39A

28.607923°,-80.603836° - Maxar Technologies

Today marks the 46th anniversary of the moon landing by NASA's Apollo 11. A Saturn V rocket launched the mission from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, USA on July 16th, 1969. That specific site is scene here. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 10:56 p.m., Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Module onto the moon’s surface and famously remarked “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Altocumulus clouds

37.300000°,62.350000° - Maxar Technologies

Altocumulus clouds - characterized by their patchy dispersal and elevation above 6,500 feet - pass over Yolöten, Turkmenistan. The town is located on the Murgab River and has a population of 37,000.

Gibraltar International Airport (GIB)

36.151111°,-5.349722° - Maxar Technologies

The Overview captures the Gibraltar International Airport, serving the British overseas territory and neighboring areas of southern Spain. Winston Churchill Avenue - the road to the border with Spain - intersects the airport runway and has to be closed every time a plane lands or departs.

Beirut

33.886944°,35.513056° - Maxar Technologies

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. Located at the midpoint of the country’s Mediterranean coast, the area serves as the country’s largest seaport. Settlement in this area is believed to date back more than 5,000 years, with recent excavations in the downtown area unearthing layers from Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader and Ottoman civilizations.

Channel Tunnel

50.931745°,1.824168° - Maxar Technologies

Trucks sit by the entrance of the Channel Tunnel in Calais, France. in an effort to get to Britain - 31.4 miles away via the underwater passage. This is the latest incident in an ongoing crisis in Europe where an estimated 100,000 migrants have entered the continent to flee violence and poverty in neighboring regions.

Fallon Range Training Complex

39.878094°,-118.398102° - Maxar Technologies

The Fallon Range Training Complex is a United States Navy military area that spans 84,000 acres in the Dixie Valley of Nevada, USA. The complex primarily hosts air-to-air and air-to-ground training exercises. Here we see an installation of metal containers that are used for covert operations training as well as instrument recognition and calibration for spy planes and satellites.

Mischief Reef

9.916667°,115.533333° - Maxar Technologies

The New York Times published a fascinating piece this morning on Chinese island building in the South China Sea. Dredgers - the boats you see here around "Mischief Reef" - pump sediment from the ocean up into floating pipes, and deposit the material onto the reef to increase land area. This enables the large-scale construction projects currently underway on the newly formed islands. See the full story .

Sandstone formations

34.890479°,-111.754571° - Maxar Technologies

Sedona, Arizona is encircled by an array of vibrant, red sandstone formations that glow throughout the day and with the setting sun. The Overview here shows the formations around Wilson Mountain, which are visible from the North side of the town.

Jodhpur

26.297840°,73.018420° - Maxar Technologies

Jodhpur, India, is home to more than one million residents, making it the second largest city in the state of Rajasthan. Jodhpur is often referred to as the “Blue City” due to the vivid, painted houses that can be seen throughout its urban area.

Desert Breath

27.380339°,33.632154° - Maxar Technologies

Desert Breath” - located in the Egyptian desert near Hurghada on the Red Sea - is a double-spiral art piece. Because the 89 protruding cones that make up one spiral are constructed from the sand that was dug to create the 89 depressed cones of the other spiral, in due time, with erosion, the area of approximately one million square feet will revert back to its original state.

Temporary Shelters in Tara Goan Park

27.720216°,85.352543° - Maxar Technologies

As many of you know, a powerful earthquake struck the country of Nepal this past Saturday. Due to tremendous damage and fear of aftershocks, many people have moved to open spaces outdoors. Satellite images taken in recent days over the city of Kathmandu show a number of these shelters appearing across the city - like the ones seen in this Overview of Tara Goan Park. To donate to Red Cross relief efforts, click . Our thoughts are with the people of Nepal during this difficult time.