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Earthquakes, Arctic daylight, rivers and life in orbit. Stories you can read, with maps you can explore.
Where the sun stays
Compare summer and winter daylight in six northern places, from Oslo to Longyearbyen.
The European Arctic · 4 min readRead the storyDaylight at the solstices
Calculated daylight · SunCalc
The collection06
6 stories
The Ocean Appearing
Forty-seven summers of retreat at the top of the world. Explore the changing ice edge and the passages coming into view.
The sky we leave behind
See how satellites orbit Earth, what they are used for, and how debris accumulates when missions end.
A restless planet
Map 145 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater recorded in 2025. Compare their depths and replay the year.
Daylight at the solstices
Calculated daylight · SunCalc
Where the sun stays
Compare summer and winter daylight in six northern places, from Oslo to Longyearbyen.
The long way to the sea
Follow the Amazon, Nile, Danube, Mekong and Ganges from their tributaries to the sea.
Inland worlds
Compare the surface area, depth and volume of five lakes, including Superior and Baikal.
About the collection
Atlas stories use public datasets from USGS, Natural Earth and other sources. Each story includes data downloads and notes on how its maps were made.
Photographs: NASA (aurora); NASA / ISS Expedition 52 (Amazon); NASA Earth Observatory / Aqua MODIS (Lake Baikal). Image credits and source links are included in each story.
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