New York, Dec 31
Many of us may have played a game where we look at the stars or at the clouds and try to "see" in them different shapes, animals and a lot many imaginary things.
Adam Voiland, a science writer for the Nasa Earth Observatory, went a step ahead by tracking down all 26 letters of the English alphabet using only NASA satellite imagery and astronaut photography, according to a NASA statement.
In the track-down of all 26 English alphabets, the two alphabets Q and I images have been taken from India and many are from Asia.
"A few years ago, while working on a story about wildfires, a V appeared to me in a satellite image of a smoke plume over Canada," Voiland said.
"With the help of readers and colleagues, I started to collect images of ephemeral features like clouds, phytoplankton blooms, and dust clouds that formed shapes reminiscent of letters," Voiland said.
Letters that were not easy to find were A, B, and R.
"When I finally tracked down all the letters and it was time to write captions, I happened to be a new dad and deep into a Dr. Seuss reading phase with my son. The Seuss-inspired ABC gallery below is the result," Voiland said.
A alphabet was captured by an astronaut of Utah's Green river from the International Space Station on January 22 last year.
B was found on a bunch of babbling birds bunched up along Holla Bend.
C was clicked by an astronaut of an artificial island at the southern end of the Bahrain Island.
The Enhanced Thematic Mapper on Landsat 7 acquired an image of Akimiski Island in James Bay which resembled the alphabet D, while E was represented by an image of a phytoplankton bloom off the coast of New Zealand.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired the image of valleys and snow-covered mountain ranges in southeastern Tibet that resembled the alphabet F.
Good day G was clicked in the Pacific Ocean of Pinaki Island by astronauts on the International Space Station in April 2001.
Hello H is an image of rivers running through colourful ridges in southwestern Kyrgyzstan. It was clicked on August 30 last year by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8.
The image of alphabet I was clicked over India's Andaman Islands after an intimidating incident involving an earthquake.
On July 17, 2015, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 captured the image of the Trunk Reef near Townsville, Australia, which resembles J, while the image of glaciers at the Sirmilik National Park Pond Inlet in Mittimatalik, Canada, closely resemble the alphabet K.
L is the image of snow across the northeastern US and M can be easily identifiable in an image of glaciers in the Tian Shan mountains in northeastern Kyrgyzstan.
The alphabet N is an image of ship emissions that caused the clouds to form over the Pacific.
Though letter O was easy to find, it was found at the Okavango delta.
Alphabet P was found on the false-colour image of the Mackenzie river delta in Canada.
The alphabet Q was located in the Lonar crater in Maharashtra in India.
R is represented by the resplendent solar radiation reflecting from the surface of a lake in Argentina.
An image captured in 2009 of clouds swirling over the Atlantic Ocean is in the form of S, while alphabet T was found into the terrain of the United Arab Emirates.
U was captured by the Ikonos satellite from Gooseneck State Park in Utah.
Big V, Little V were captured from vast volumes of volcanic ash on the snow around Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka, Russia.
A satellite captured the image of dust blowing over the Red Sea in 2009 which resembles W, while X is represented in a false-colour image of the northwest corner of Leidy glacier in Greenland.
The image of the Ugab river in Namibia is clearly seen in the shape of the alphabet Y in an image captured in 2000 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of wildfire smoke over Canada which resembles Z of the English alphabet.
