The Burning Man festival, held annually in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, has been a bastion of the US counterculture for decades, and these days routinely welcomes tens of thousands of attendees every year.
The sheer scale and sprawling grandeur of the desert festival is something that’s impossible to capture in any single image, but one incredible photo taken from space gets a nod for giving us a distinctly unique overview of the famous spectacle.
This newly released shot taken by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows what Burning Man looks like from the vantage point of a satellite in orbit, tracing the outline of some of the over 70,000 attendees who took part in this year’s proceedings.
The image shows the settlement of camper vans, vehicles, tents, and installations that make up Black Rock City, the temporary desert community that gathers together for the week of the event, before disbanding for another year.
Photographing cultural festivals is not Sentinel’s regular day job.
The satellite mission’s main role is giving us a unique perspective on environmental changes taking place in the world, tracking things like iceberg calving events in Antarctica, bushfire disasters in Australia, dust plumes sweeping over the globe, and pollution impacts across Europe.