Satellite image of Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are located west of Africa and offer some of the world's best locations for astronomical observations. Several large telescopes are located at the facilities on the volcanic mountains of La Palma (left) and Tenerife (right). This infrastructure on the neighbouring islands enables long-distance laser links over 143 km, an ideal testing distance for laser links between the ground and a satellite, where a similar amount of atmosphere needs to be crossed. This image was acquired on 9 November 2011 by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS).