Exquisite Earth

• Kilauea Volcano
  A time lapse photo shows lava flowing from Kilauea volcano into the ocean in Kalapana, Hawaii. Thousands of visitors a day come to nearby Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to watch Kilauea erupt, something it has been doing for a quarter-century. But some residents live with the boiling lava every day and revel in the notion that their homes and lives are subject to the whims of earth's awesome underground forces.
  
  
  

  Marco Garcia, AP

• Pamukkale, Turkey
  Pamukkale is an unusual natural and historical site with sparkling white castle-like cascades. It is one of the most important highlights of Turkey, unique in the world. The site is named in Turkish as "Pamukkale," which means "cotton castle." The dazzling white calcareous castles are formed by limestone-laden thermal springs, creating the unbelievable formation of stalactites, potholes and cataracts. The water of Pamukkale is famous for its benefits to the eyes and skin and it's known for the curing properties to the ills of asthma, rheumatism, as well. In this photo, Pamukkale, Turkey -- sunset at Travertine Terrace Pools.
  
  
  

  Michele Burgess, Corbis

• Antarctic
  In this photo released by Amazonas Images, Adelie penguins are seen in an undated photo by Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado in Rope Bay, Antartic. Salgado is involved in Genesis, an eight-year project from 2004 to 2012 that will take him on a global photographic journey to remote regions such as the Himalayas, the Galapagos Islands, the deserts of Namibia and the glaciers of Argentina and Chile.
  
  
  

  Sebastiao Salgado, Amazonas Images / Keystone / AP

• Ayers Rock
  Ayers Rock, also known as Uluru, is one of the oldest rocks on Earth. It formed over a period of about 500 million years and was created when sand piled up on the bottom of an ocean that once covered the middle of Australia. Over the years, wind and rain have beat at the rock. The flattened top now is 1,142 feet above the plains and the base is an amazing 5 miles around. This rock is famous for it's habit of apparently changing color. At sunrise and sunset, the rock appears to become a deeper red color. The reason the colors change is because the Sun is at such a low angle. The rays of light have to travel through a greater thickness of atmosphere, and the blue light is bent away, leaving behind red light, which makes Uluru glow radiantly red. The other factor is that the landscape surrounding Ayers Rock is completely flat; that means just as the sun dips below the horizon, the landscape is in shadow, but sunlight still shines on the rock. This contrast between the dark base and light rock, make Ayers Rock appear to glow in a spectacular deep red.
  
  
  

  Corbis

• Ayers Rock
  Ayers Rock takes on an unusual color as waterfalls cascade down its walls in central Australia. The rock, which is usually a reddish color, is shown after heavy rains and is seldom seen like this. Although rainfall is uncommon in this semiarid area, during wet periods the rock acquires a silvery-gray color, with streaks of black algae forming on the areas that serve as channels for water flow. The difference in these two views is striking.
  
  
  

  Steve Strike, AP

• The Great Barrier Reef
  The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for more than 1,600 miles over an area of approximately 214,000 square miles. The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life, and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981. it is widely considered one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
  
  
  

  Queensland Tourism, HO / AP

• Ngorongoro Crater
  The Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest unbroken, unflooded volcanic caldera. The Crater, which formed when a giant volcano exploded and collapsed on itself some two to three million years ago, is 2,000 feet deep and its floor covers 160 square miles. Estimates of the height of the original volcano range from 1,500 to 1,900 thousand feet high.
  A herd of Common Plains Zebra (Grant's) walk by the salt pan of Lake Magadi in the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.
  
  
  

  Tim Graham, Getty Images

• Victoria Falls
  Victoria Falls is just over a mile wide, which makes it the largest curtain of water in the world. It drops between 295 and 350 feet into the Zambezi Gorge; an average of 600,000 cubic yards of water plummet over the edge every minute.
  
  
  

• The Himalayas
  The Himalayas, or the "abode of snow," is a mountain system in Asia that forms a broad continuous arc for nearly 1,600 miles along the northern fringes of the Indian subcontinent, from the bend of the Indus River in the northwest to the Brahmaputra River in the east. The Himalayas range, averaging about 200 to 250 miles in width, rises sharply from the Gangetic Plain. The Himalayas form the earth's highest mountain region, containing nine of the 10 highest peaks in the world. Among these peaks are the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest (29,028 feet), which is on the Nepal-Tibet border; the second highest peak, K2 or Mount Godwin Austen (28,251 feet), located on the border between China, Jammu and Kashmir; and Kanchenjunga (28,209 feet) on the Nepal-India border. This photo shows Tsho Rolpa Glacier Lake in the Himalayas.
  
  
  

  Macduff Everton, Corbis

• The Himalayas
  
  A less expected view of the Himalayas shows soaring, snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalayas Mountains create an irregular white-on-red patchwork between major rivers in southwestern China. The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together extend more than 2900 kilometers.
  
  
  

  USGS / NASA