Images
February 8, 2025 - Scotland's Islands
Tweet
On January 7, 2025, light clouds covered Scotland’s Southern Uplands as clear skies allowed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to capture this stunning image of the Midland Valley, Highlands, and far-ranging islands.
Sitting at the north tip of the island of Great Britain, Scotland offers the United Kingdom some of its most rugged and remote landscape, including approximately 900 islands that ring the mainland. Many of these islands are tiny, harsh, and uninhabited—in fact, in the 2011 census, only 93 of them were inhabited by at least one person, according to the Scottish government website. Most of the inhabited islands were very sparsely populated.
While the Scottish government’s website clusters the inhabited islands in groups of 9 (in 2023) or 10 (in 2024) to aid in the study of population, climate, and other features of the islands, they are generally divided into four major groupings. The longest group of islands that give the appearance of a crescent off the west coast of the Scottish mainland are the Outer Hebrides. A large group of islands between the Outer Hebrides and the mainland are called the Inner Hebrides. In the northeast, a group of islands close to the mainland are called the Orkney Islands. In this image, they appear green. Further to the northeast are the Shetland Islands.
Greenish swirls color the waters of the Atlantic Ocean west of Scotland and the North Sea, to the east. This marks a massive winter bloom of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that live in relatively small numbers in these waters year-round. When conditions are favorable, they can reproduce explosively to create huge floating colonies that can easily be viewed from space.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 2/7/2025
Resolutions:
1km (176 KB), 500m (568.7 KB), 250m (1.3 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
On January 7, 2025, light clouds covered Scotland’s Southern Uplands as clear skies allowed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to capture this stunning image of the Midland Valley, Highlands, and far-ranging islands.
Sitting at the north tip of the island of Great Britain, Scotland offers the United Kingdom some of its most rugged and remote landscape, including approximately 900 islands that ring the mainland. Many of these islands are tiny, harsh, and uninhabited—in fact, in the 2011 census, only 93 of them were inhabited by at least one person, according to the Scottish government website. Most of the inhabited islands were very sparsely populated.
While the Scottish government’s website clusters the inhabited islands in groups of 9 (in 2023) or 10 (in 2024) to aid in the study of population, climate, and other features of the islands, they are generally divided into four major groupings. The longest group of islands that give the appearance of a crescent off the west coast of the Scottish mainland are the Outer Hebrides. A large group of islands between the Outer Hebrides and the mainland are called the Inner Hebrides. In the northeast, a group of islands close to the mainland are called the Orkney Islands. In this image, they appear green. Further to the northeast are the Shetland Islands.
Greenish swirls color the waters of the Atlantic Ocean west of Scotland and the North Sea, to the east. This marks a massive winter bloom of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that live in relatively small numbers in these waters year-round. When conditions are favorable, they can reproduce explosively to create huge floating colonies that can easily be viewed from space.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 2/7/2025
Resolutions:
1km (176 KB), 500m (568.7 KB), 250m (1.3 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
