February 02/2007 National Geographic Image

February 02/2007 National Geographic Image

Flowing Border

Texas catches the sun and Chihuahua lies in shadow along the twisting border line of the Rio Grande. The river cuts its path between thick bands of volcanic rocks, left behind by massive eruptions to the north and south between 27 and 32 million years ago. An outcrop on the Texas side, in Big Bend Ranch State Park, shows distinct bands of light-colored tuff, remnants of ancient ash falls.

February 01/2007 National Geographic Image

February 01/2007 National Geographic Image


Salt of the Earth

Salt dug from the world's largest salt plain in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, waits for transport to surrounding Andean villages. It's one of the flattest places on Earth; relief varies by less than 16 inches (41 centimeters) across some 4,000 square miles (10,400 square kilometers).

January 08/2007 National Geographic Image

January 08/2007 National Geographic Image


Tough Sledding

Day after day after day for two months, Mike, like Børge, dragged a floatable sledge over rugged pack ice. Except for two rest days, the routine never changed: Rising after seven hours of sleep, Mike and Børge wolfed down a breakfast of oatmeal generously fortified with fat and sugar, broke down the tent, and packed equipment—a three-hour process. Then came ten hours or more of skiing with breaks for snacks followed by a freeze-dried meal at night. "For the first four days, you think only about women," says Mike. "The rest of the way you think of nothing but food. For me it was thick steaks and pizza."

January 07/2007 National Geographic Image

January 07/2007 National Geographic Image


Sea Change
A foreign worker stacks fish traps near the Burj al Arab—the world's tallest hotel and icon of the new Dubai. In a generation, the city's rulers have transformed this once sleepy fishing port into a hub of the Middle East.

January 06/2007 National Geographic Image

January 06/2007 National Geographic Image

Bouquet Beautiful
Vivid as the flowers that fuel their hovering flight, hummingbirds, such as this steely-vented variety in Colombia, do more than dazzle the eye. Beneath the pretty plumage these tiny dynamos are marvels of micro-engineering.

January 04/2007 National Geographic Image

January 04/2007 National Geographic Image


Crown Jewels

Pollen grains decorate the crown of a male velvet-purple coronet resting on a bromeliad in Ecuador, evidence of the bird's value as a reliable pollinator. Hummingbirds spend almost 80 percent of their waking hours perched like this to conserve energy. During chilly nights they can also enter torpor, a state in which their body temperature can drop more than 40°F (22°C), curbing their need for food until dawn. "Hummingbirds are incredibly flexible and adaptable," says Karl Schuchmann, an ornithologist at Germany's Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and the Brehm Fund. "That's the secret of their success."

January 03/2007 National Geographic Image

January 03/2007 National Geographic Image

Fire on the Horizon

This incandescent lava lake seethes within Virunga National Park's Nyiragongo volcano just ten miles (16 kilometers) miles from Goma, a city of half a million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

January 02/2007 National Geographic Image

January 02/2007 National Geographic Image

Winged Wonder
Wings outstretched, talons flared, and ears tuned to the faintest scrabblings of a rodent hidden under winter's white carpet, a snowy owl in Quebec Province, Canada, prepares to pounce.

January 01/2007 National Geographic Image

January 01/2007 National Geographic Image

Bubble Trouble
With a stream of bubbles, a male humpback whale tries to entice a female swimming below him.
All material for this article obtained under National Marine Fisheries Service permit 753-1599.

January 05/2007 National Geographic Image

January 05/2007 National Geographic Image


Gleaming Fortress
Jumeirah Beach Residence rose in just 36 months, its concrete poured by laborers working day and night. Some critics are questioning the speed of change and a lack of planning: The towering apartment complexes stand like a wall, cutting off the rest of Dubai from its coast.

October 2007 National Geographic Image

October 2007 National Geographic Image

Cordillera Blanca

Fins of stone and fields of snow surround Parón glacier in western Peru.

Rio Negro

This tributary of the Amazon reflects sky and clouds beside a cemetery dug into its bank.

Lago Ypoa National Park

After grazing, these Brahma cattle thread through the rain-loosened Paraguayan marsh back to corral.

Historic Stroll

In 1984, Bruce McCandless II became the first person to walk untethered in space. His jet-pack-powered stroll near the shuttle Challenger was one milestone in humanity's journey into space—an adventure that began 50 years ago this month.

Pacaya

Dawn reveals the smoldering fury of Pacaya, one of Guatemala's most active volcanoes.

Boca Del Drango

Feeding in shallows off the Panamanian coast, these starfish sailed ashore on the translucent tides.

Arctic Ocean

Looking like a rack of blown-glass vases, inch-long swimming bells of a siphonophore—a jellyfish relative called Marrus orthocanna—hang from a tubular stem that delivers nutrients to the bells.

Nearing the End

Discovery embarked last December on its 33rd mission; the three shuttles are slated to be decommissioned by the end of 2010. Next up from NASA: a new generation of rockets and vehicles—dubbed Ares and Orion—designed to carry astronauts back to the moon, and from there, perhaps, to Mars.

Pirate's Paradise

A pongpong chugs up an obscure canal on Tanjung Batu, an island off Sumatra. These waters, near the Strait of Malacca, have long been a pirate's paradise.

Lighthouse Reef

Dark lens on inner space, a sinkhole in Belize's Blue Hole Natural Monument plunges 410 feet (125 meters).

India

The blue walls of Jodhpur traditionally marked homes occupied by high-caste Brahmans. The rooftop langurs, believed by Hindus to be avatars of the monkey god Hanuman, freely roam the city.

Suit-Able for Deep Space

Designed to withstand temperatures ranging from 240°F above zero (115°C) to 240°F below (-151°C), the Mark III space suit undergoes testing in the Johnson Space Center's lunar yard. With its rear-mounted life-support system attached, the suit weighs a ponderous 300 pounds (136 kilograms). This weight melts away in weakened gravity, however, and astronauts somersault and hand-walk with underwater ease.

Food or Fuel?

A field of corn awaits harvest in Mexico, where cornmeal is a dietary staple. Rising demand for corn ethanol and speculation by large producers drove up prices for both yellow and white corn last year, causing tortilla prices to more than double in some parts of Mexico and setting off angry protests.

Yucatán Peninsula

A shifting flock of flamingos assumes a whimsical shape in the Gulf of Mexico.

South Dakota

Erupting into a flapping liftoff frenzy when menaced by hawks overhead, nearly a thousand mallards—flashy males and subtler females—congregated on this Tuthill pond last winter.

September 2007 National Geographic Image

September 2007 National Geographic Image


Etna Blows Her Top

Jutting 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) into the Sicilian sky, Mount Etna ranks among the planet's most active volcanoes. This eruption photographed last December was part of a cycle of activity that began in July 2006.

A Walk in the Park

At the gates of Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park, southern Alberta's rolling, wildflower-freckled grasslands heave abruptly, thunderously skyward to meet the front range of the Rockies.

Sleeping Giant

The world's most dangerous volcano looms over the lives of three million people in southern Italy. An eruption in A.D. 79 buried the town of Pompeii (near the white spire, at center), but new research indicates the next blast could be much bigger.

Island Hopping

Jungled karst islands form the magical maze of Wayag at the northern reach of the Raja Ampat Islands. Its baroque geography is a microcosm of the archipelago.

Glaciers Rule

Chiseled promontories edging St. Mary Lake bear witness: Ice moved here. Glaciers ruled supreme 15,000 years ago, piled so deep that only the tops of the tallest peaks caught the warmth of sunrise.

Summer Storm

The calendar said last day of summer, but the sky declared a January mood, with road-closing snowdrifts. In a landscape painted for millennia in the blue-white hues of cold, winter is never far away.

Papua Pyrotechnics

Like a fireworks factory struck by lightning, Tavurvur—an active cone in the massive Rabaul caldera—spews incandescent, fist-to football-size bombs of glowing-hot volcanic material.

The Great Divide

Long after its frothing tumble down the east side of Logan Pass, this water will stream into the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually join the Atlantic Ocean.

Lava Lamp

The infernal glow of a lava lake in the Ertale volcano rivals moonrise over the Danakil Desert. Molten surface temperatures range from 550°F (288ºC) near the 262-foot-high (80 meters) walls to nearly 1000°F (538ºC) at the center of the pit.

Going With the Flow

A lone barracuda insinuates itself into a school of bluetail unicornfish. These fish congregate by the hundreds, following currents at the edge of reef drop-offs.

August 2007 National Geographic Image

August 2007 National Geographic Image

Dazzling Heavens

With Polaris as a hub, stars streak through the night in a time exposure of the House of the Magician at Uxmal. Sophisticated sky watchers, the Maya tracked the movements of the stars and planets closely and created an accurate solar-year calendar based on their observations.

Do not Blink

Set off by the touch of a prey insect against sensitive trigger hairs, the mandibles of the trap-jaw ant Odontomachus hastatus snap shut in the fastest reflex ever recorded in the animal kingdom. The ant's jaws accelerate from zero to 143 miles (230 kilometers) an hour in 0.13 milliseconds—2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye.

Swordplay

Playful as children, elegant as swordsmen, narwhals surface through a hole in melting ice as others do the same in the distance. This kind of movement, where several males converge and gently push against each other, is common in spring when narwhals migrate to coastal summering grounds. A large white patch, visible on the whale at right, is a scar left by a hunter's bullet.

Hanging Ten Down Under

Hard at play less than five miles (eight kilometers) from central Sydney, surfers off Bondi Beach relish a perfect day: five-foot (1.5 meters) waves and no wind. The sport was introduced to Australia in 1915 by Hawaiian legend Duke Kahanamoku.

Storm Funnel

The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (at right) merges with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway just east of New Orleans. After Katrina, investigators concluded that the levees along the channels funneled storm surge along MRGO straight into the city.

Portrait of a King

Fashioned from 340 pieces of jade, a death mask immortalizes the face of Palenque's King Pakal.

Arctic Unicorn

Prized by medieval royalty, inspiration for unicorn myths, narwhal tusks have driven men to extremes for centuries. Today the quest for tusks and skin threatens some populations.

Carnival Creativity

A glittering, feather-swathed dancer rides a huge hummingbird in Rio de Janeiro's Carnival parade competition. She is one of thousands of Beija-Flor samba school members who captured the 2007 championship.

July 2007 National Geographic Image

July 2007 National Geographic Image


Cavern Decor

Chandeliers and pillars of stone, their edges and shadows doubled in the glass-smooth surface of an underground pool, have awed visitors to the Reed Flute Cave in China's Guangxi Zhuangzu region for more than a thousand years.

Arboreal Light Show

A tree ablaze with fireflies in Indonesia blinks on and off as each insect adjusts its flashes to match the others. Such self-organized behavior resembles the synchronized firing of heart muscle cells or the rhythmic applause of a crowd—but seems more mysterious.

Breaking Through

Isolated rays of sunlight pierce the clouds hanging thick over Favorite Channel. Such weather is characteristic of the Tongass, where rainfall averages 146 inches (371 centimeters) yearly.

On the Move

Wildebeests crossing the Mara River in Kenya may be able to follow a migration route even if only a few of them know the way, say researchers using a computer model of herd behavior. Never mind that the informed animals aren't trying to lead. The rest follow anyway.

Menace Under Scrutiny

A female Anopheles mosquito acts as a deadly hypodermic, injecting the malaria parasite when she feeds on human blood. Nearly half a billion people get malaria each year. More than a million die. After decades of neglect, the world is renewing its fight against the disease.

Sun-washed Ramparts

High winds scour peaks on the Chilkat Range. Of the Tongass National Forest's 16.8 million acres (6.7 million hectares), the majority is glacier, rock, or scrub. Industry and conservationists spar over some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of surviving big-tree forestland.

Vibrant Display

A red bird of paradise, Paradisaea rubra, spreads its wings elegantly in a New Guinea mountain forest.

Color Blast

Sparkling like underwater fireworks, this six-inch-wide (15 centimeters) Olindias jellyfish at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium displays an extravagantly curled and colored armament of tentacles loaded with stinging cells.