Bad Astronomy

’tis a bit nippy, guvnah!

As I write this, it’s about -15 C outside where I live in Boulder, and even the snow looks like it’s shivering. So I’m not sure if I’m happy to share the grief or feel badly about the weather for folks in the UK, who generally don’t get (metric, I suppose) tons of snow. But then I saw this image from NASA’s Earth observing Terra satellite:

Holy Haleakala, that’s gorgeous! I won’t say I’m exactly glad they got lots of snow, but still, wow. Sorry, my anglic friends, but your suffering has produced this stunning beauty.

The image was taken on January 7, 2010 at around noon local time. The image above has 1 km pixels, but you can also grab the image in higher-res 500 meter and 250 meter versions, too.