If you took a stack of satellite photos and handed them to a Crayola-wielding child, you'd get back something like this. In fact these vivid and unusual pictures of Earth from above are authentic captures from US Geological Survey (USGS) satellites, the jazzy colours created by various sensors aboard. Technical engineers were so taken with some of the scenes they received back from the Landsat 7 and Terra satellites, some using the Aster radiometer, they decided to start collecting snaps "for their aesthetic beauty rather than any scientific value". The results have been released as an online gallery called Earth as Art, and make for fascinating viewing.

"Since we started assembling the collection," says USGS spokesperson Jan Nelson, "technicians send us notes saying, 'You've got to check this one out!'" They can manipulate the images by experimenting with different settings. An infrared band, for instance, will give a green-tinged picture.

Nelson's favourite is an image they've labelled Van Gogh from Space, but many people have been taken with a purpley one of Alaska's Yukon Delta that resembles a human heart. "And if you look closely at the one of Lake Eyre," she says, "you can see a skull with eye sockets…"