White planet

Another glorious set of images courtesy of the guardian www.guardian.co.uk/inpictures. There's an abundance of gems in the latest album but I've picked out a few that I think, quite frankly, are stunning satellite views of the earth.

The Mid-Atlantic states were completely white on 20 December 2009. The storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC on 19 December, according to the National Weather Service. For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single December day. Photograph: Aqua/MODIS/NASA

The late-December snowstorm that left a swath of white across the south-central United States on 25 December, 2009, and covered the Texan town of Snyder. Photograph: EO-1/NASA

Nunavut territory in the Canadian Arctic, a shallow extension of the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the low elevation of the sun at this time of the year, the top of the image appears very dark. The position of the low sun gives the clouds in the upper part of the image a reddish tint. Photograph: AATSR/Envisat/ESA