Earth as Art: NASA releases book of stunning satellite images
Painted Desert, United States
Credit: KING
In Arizona there lies a long expanse of arid, erosion-prone, austere badlands made of multicolored mudstones and clays. This “Painted Desert” extends from the Grand Canyon southeast to the Petrified Forest National Park, stretching over 260 kilometers and encompassing over 36,000 hectares. This 2009 Landsat 5 image captured the Painted Desert as it abruptly ends at the Sitgreaves National Forest, an area with thousands of hectares of forest as well as eight cold-water lakes. Also within the Painted Desert lie the Hopi Buttes, a field of ancient volcanic cones, seen here as a scattering of dark, circular shapes near the top of the image.
