Summer Begins in Northern Hemisphere

This is not a painting at all but a photograph of Earth, captured by NASA's GOES satellite to mark the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. The image shows the Americas in full daylight, with North America near the top, the slim bridge of Central America, and the sweep of South America trailing down toward the bottom. Along the right edge you can spot a bright golden sliver where sunlight catches the atmosphere, a reminder that this is a real moment in time, frozen from about 22,000 miles above the planet.

Satellites like GOES were built for weather forecasting, so the swirling white bands you see are cloud systems moving across the oceans and continents. The green heart of the image is the Amazon rainforest, and the deep blues are the Atlantic and Pacific stitched together around the coasts. Images like this one owe a debt to the famous "Blue Marble" photo taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, which changed how people pictured their own home. Seeing the whole planet at once, with no borders drawn on it, has a way of putting things in perspective.