In recent years, our country has been regularly photographed by astronauts and satellites. These are the most beautiful photos.

Pearl necklace for the coast

On May 13, 2006, astronaut Jeff Williams photographed the coastline of the Netherlands. The Dutch and German Wadden Islands in particular catch the eye and lie like a pearl necklace off the north coast. Furthermore, various lakes, waterways and canals can be seen, such as the Fluessen in Friesland and the North Sea Canal in North Holland. The photo of this American astronaut was in the top 10 most beautiful space photos of the year in 2016. Download this photo as a background photo for your phone.

winter wonderland

On February 11, 2021, our country was hit by the first major snow storm in ten years and the Netherlands turned completely white. The snow showers quickly dissipated, after which the Terra satellite took this beautiful picture of our little country. Ice formation can be seen south of the Afsluitdijk. The cities are also clearly recognizable as light gray spots in the landscape.

The European Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured a photo at the same time. Also note the United Kingdom, where the northeast coast is covered in snow, but the interior is not. Do you want to download this photo in high resolution? Go to ESA’s website.

André Kuipers takes a look at the Netherlands

ESA astronaut André Kuipers spent a total of 204 days in space, 11 days in 2004 and 193 days in 2011 and 2012. While on board the International Space Station, he regularly photographed his home planet. For example, it resulted in the snapshot below. A unique photo with beautiful colors and a nice contrast with the cloud cover.

Ice Formation in Dutch Lakes

At the beginning of 2018 it froze hard in the Netherlands, resulting in ice formation in the IJmeer, Markermeer and IJsselmeer. The European Copernicus-Sentinel-2 satellite pointed its camera at our country and immortalized this event.

Snowing Fog

In January 2017, part of the Netherlands had to deal with a special kind of snowfall, namely snowing fog. Snow-snowing fog often occurs near industrial areas and cities, namely when fog droplets freeze in a thick fog field. They then turn into snowflakes. The result is that a small area becomes ‘white’. This can be clearly seen in the photo below from the Landsat 8 satellite. The local snow areas are almost all located west of industrial areas.

Green landscape

We close with a colorful summer photo of astronaut Thomas Pesquet. “The Netherlands is not the biggest country, but still I didn’t manage to get the whole country in one frame,” he tweeted. earlier this year.

Over the past decades, space telescopes and satellites have captured beautiful images of nebulae, galaxies, stellar nurseries and planets. Every weekend we remove one or more impressive space photos from the archive. This is the third article in the series, but you will soon be able to find all the photos on this page.