This one cropped up through Google’s Earth View Chrome extension.

The Tes River runs east to west into northwest Mongolia from the Sayan Mountains in Siberia.

It empties into the Uvs Nuur Basin, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The river’s floodplain looks amazing from the air, a 10+ mile wide swath with dozens of smaller streams formed as the main course has meandered all over and stranded oxbows and dropped bands of sediment.

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On this edition of Places is the Mergui Archipelago, a string of coastal islands off of southern Myanmar in the Andaman Sea.

I saw this image a few years back on NASA’s Earth Observatory feed. It’s an amazing snapshot from Landsat 5 that shows gorgeous colors from the silts and sediments emptied at the mouth of the Lenya River. The tidal motions make the colored sea water smear across the image like an oil painting. I also love the dendritic patterns of the streams and tributaries on the islands. They give...