Seattle, Washington, sometimes known as the “Emerald City,” sparkled in the morning sunlight when an astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo on June 16, 2026. The city’s parks and tree-filled neighborhoods give the metropolis a lush, green look, while tall downtown buildings cast long shadows and boats cruise the surrounding canals.

The broad contours of the city’s landscape and surrounding water owe their shape to the advance and retreat of glaciers during the last ice age. About 18,000 to 16,000 years ago, the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered the area with a mass of ice up to 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) thick. The glacier swept away the basins now occupied by Puget Sound and the region’s lakes.

The glacier also left its mark on the water. Several of Seattle’s famous hills (of which there are seven or more, depending on who’s counting) are drumlins. These elongated mounds of glacial debris run from north to south, parallel to the direction of ice movement. East-west travelers in the city, facing challenging ups and downs, can attest to this topographical trend.

The ice also transported large boulders called glacial erratics from places further north and deposited them around the region. One particularly large erratic, Wedgwood Rock, measures about 20 feet (6 meters) tall and takes its name from the North Seattle neighborhood in which it is located.

In more recent times, humans have undertaken projects to modify topography. Notable alterations include grading Denny Hill north of downtown and filling in marshes at the mouth of the Duwamish River south of downtown, which created about 1,300 acres of new land. Seattle’s professional sports stadiums sit on top of this landfill.

This photo was acquired after several development projects were completed to update downtown’s waterfront infrastructure, begun in 2010. These include a new pier and ferry terminal, a reconstructed seawall, and a tunnel to replace an above-ground road and create more attractive public access to the waterfront.

From the astronaut’s perspective, some reconstitution of the region’s waterways is also evident. In the 1910s, the Army Corps of Engineers built canals on both sides of Lake Union to connect Puget Sound (an inlet of the Pacific Ocean) to Lake Washington. Beginning in 1916, Montlake Cut connected Lake Washington to Lake Union, and Ballard Locks, northwest of Lake Union, began raising and lowering vessels between the freshwater and tidal lakes of Puget Sound. As a result of this project, Lake Washington’s water level dropped about 9 feet (3 meters) and stopped draining from its natural outlet at its southern end.

Today, the waters in and around Seattle support many uses: container ships, cruise ships, car and passenger ferries, seaplanes, and pleasure craft ply the strait and lakes. And as for Seattle’s emerald nickname, pockets of old-growth forest still exist within the city limits, containing ancient trees such as Douglas fir, western red cedar, and western hemlock. Seattleites often spot wildlife such as bald eagles, coyotes, and sea lions in the city’s various habitats.

Astronaut photograph ISS074-E-723719 was acquired on June 16, 2026 with a Nikon Z9 digital camera with a focal length of 560 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observation Facility and the Earth Sciences and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by an Expedition 74 crew member. The image was cropped and enhanced to improve contrast and lens artifacts were removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Laboratory to help astronauts take photographs of Earth that will be of great value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

June 16, 2026: Detailed view

• booth, database, et al. (2003) The Cordilleran ice sheet. Development in quaternary science1, 17-43.
• Cascade PBS (January 9, 2025) The giant ice sheet that shaped Seattle. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• City of Seattle (2026) Waterfront Seattle Program. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• HistoryLink.org (February 5, 2017) Lake Washington Ship Canal (Seattle). Accessed July 17, 2026.
• HistoryLink.org (December 30, 2016) Cedar-Sammamish Watershed. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• Williams, D.B. (2017) Too high and too steep. University of Washington Press.