A selection of scientists from NASA have been in Washington D.C. since Friday to celebrate the 42nd Annual Earth Day at the National Mall. They have set up three tents with activities and exhibits are free and open to the public (as all events at the Mall are today) at their “NASA Village.”

The Green Theater is one of these tents and will feature presentations by NASA and one topic during Friday’s festivities was satellite imagery. The agency has been beaming back images of Earth, surrounding planets, and stars for such a long time it’s become routine.

NASA’s Global Climate Change website, which won a Webby last year for “Best Science Site”, wanted to shake things up a bit by presenting their pictures in the “State of Flux” gallery differently in honor of Earth Day.

"Seeing our planet from space gives us a global view that we can't get elsewhere," said Amber Jenkins, site editor of the Global Climate Change website,  "It underscores how fragile and interconnected our planet is, and how it is constantly changing. With this new version of the gallery, we want people to be better able to immerse themselves in the images, and gain that sense of perspective."

“State of Flux” contains images from space, landscape and aerial photos, and even a map of Boston circa 1838 that show how Earth has changed over time -either in just a few days or over longer stretches.

There are 165 side-by-side comparison images of changes to the Earth’s surface because of natural disasters, urban growth, and climate change. A user can view these images as thumbnails on five pages, as one giant slideshow or jump from organized categories like “Human Impact” and “Extreme Events.” The website’s team has set aside their favorite images in the “Top Picks” section. There are lots of pictures of ice melt in this gallery which provide the most striking and easy to see changes.

There is a now a “map view” for users to understand geographically where these events  have happened and where changes are ongoing.  Especially, the images of the impact deforestation has had in Africa and South America or the dismal aerial of an Oil Field in Kuwait during the Gulf War.

NASA is always adding to the gallery so to check for updates, see some of the images mentioned here, and use the new features please be sure to stop by their site and poke around a bit.

For more information about the events at the National Mall please visit the Earth Day Network's site.