It’s not rocket science—but then again, it sort of is. Adam Volland, a technical writer at NASA—you know, the people who put Americans into space—was peering at satellite images over a wildfire in Canada when he noticed it: A little letter V. The next logical step? Finding the other 25 letters of the alphabet from images of the Earth, of course.
The photos Volland curated cover a range of places across the Earth, from Kyrgyzstan to the United States, and feature everything from clouds to phytoplankton blooms.
Related: From the moon to Mars, read Maclean’s Space Issue, guest-edited by Chris Hadfield
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Nasa Alphabet
FILED UNDER: Editor's Picks NASA photo essay space