Mount Everest from Space

This is not a painting at all but a photograph taken from the International Space Station, looking straight down at the Himalayas with Mount Everest hidden somewhere among these ridges. The dark valleys cut deep between the peaks, and the white you see is not cloud but snow and ice clinging to the highest ground. Long tongues of pale rock and glacial debris snake down the slopes, showing how ice has ground its way through these mountains over thousands of years.

Astronauts on the space station regularly photograph Earth, partly for science and partly because the views are simply hard to resist. Shots like this one help researchers track how glaciers shift and shrink over time, which matters a great deal to the millions of people downstream who depend on Himalayan meltwater. The odd thing about seeing Everest from above is how it disappears into the crowd. From the ground it towers over everything, but from orbit it becomes just one wrinkle among many in the largest mountain range on the planet.