Lake Chany imaged by Proba-V

Russia’s frozen Lake Chany dusted by snow, as seen by ESA’s Proba-V Earth-observing minisatellite.

Sitting just north of the border with Kazakhstan, Lake Chany is a large but shallow freshwater lake surrounded by wetlands, salt marshes and birch and aspen forests, making it an important stop for birds migrating southwards from colder Siberia.

Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Its main camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath width collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands at 300 m resolution and down to 100 m resolution in its central field of view.

VITO Remote Sensing in Belgium processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users worldwide. An online image gallery highlights some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.

This 100 m-resolution image was acquired on 1 December 2016.