California’s famous alien landscape seen from space
NASA's Landsat 9 satellite has captured a unique false-color image of California's Vasquez Rocks, a geological site famous for its frequent use as a filming location for alien landscapes. The image uses infrared light to highlight vegetation and geological features invisible to the human eye.
Why it matters
Satellite imagery provides valuable data for geological study and environmental monitoring while offering a new perspective on iconic landmarks.
California’s Vasquez Rocks have stood in for alien worlds for decades. A NASA satellite image reveals the famous landscape from space.
Southern California is home to a landscape so unusual that Hollywood has spent decades pretending it belongs on other planets.
Vasquez Rocks Natural Area rises from the dry Soledad Basin north of Los Angeles, where enormous slabs of sedimentary rock tilt dramatically toward the sky.
Some of the formations reach angles of around 50 degrees, giving the landscape its distinctive jagged appearance.
Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory reveals this famous landscape from a very different perspective – hundreds of miles above Earth.
The image was captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 9 satellite .
NASA used a combination of shortwave-infrared, near-infrared, and visible wavelengths to produce this false-color view.
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