Okovango River, Africa

Northern Namibia and southern Angola is pictured in this Kompsat-2 image. The Okavango River forms the border between Namibia to the south and Angola to the north. In the upper left corner, dots of white and other bright colors near a road show rural settlements. (KARI/SEA)

Every day, NASA's satellites capture awe-inspiring images of Earth from miles above our planet's surface. Depending on where the satellites fly, the photographs they send back may be of scenes as ordinary as Africa's Okovango River or as cataclysmic as volcanic eruptions, like several captured in the photos above.

Astronauts aboard the also bring along cameras of their own, with which they have taken some of the photos in this collection. All of the images above appeared first in NASA's Image of the Day archive and the NASA Earth Observatory, an online collection whose archives date back to April 1999.

See more at NASA's , or visit the .

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