Switzerland

The Matterhorn is a pyramidal mountain on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Its summit is 4,478 m (14,692 ft) high, making it one of the highest, most famous, and deadliest peaks in the Alps. The steep faces, oriented to each compass point, cause regular avalanches; the snow that builds up around the base forms glaciers. Mountains around the world with similar profiles frequently earn "Matterhorn" as a nickname because of the mountain's iconic shape.

Three of the higher peaks of the Bernese Alps are visible -Jungfrau (4,158 m), Moench (4,089 m), and Eiger (3,970 m). To the east and south of the Jungfrau is the Aletsch Glacier, clearly marked by dark medial moraines extending along the glacier's length parallel to the valley axis. Moraines are formed from rock and soil debris scoured along the sides of mountain glaciers that gradually accumulate in the middle of the glacier and are carried along the flow direction. Lake Brienz to the northwest is glacially carved. Image courtesy of NASA.

Area comparison map

The Swiss Alps enfold a verdant valley.

House overlooking an Alpine valley.

A rare cloud-free view of a wide area of Western Europe. This Aqua satellite image was captured on 30 August 2008. Skies were clear from the Netherlands in the north to Italy in the south, revealing several of Europe's famous natural and man-made features. A few small fires (marked with red dots) were detected, as well. A pair of geologically matching mountain ranges appear at the border of France and Germany, covered in dark green forests. France's Vosges and Germany's Black Forest rise on either side of the Rhine River Valley. The valley in that area is known to geologists as the Rhine Graben; a graben is an elongated block of Earth's crust that has sunk relative to surrounding blocks. To the south, the snow-covered Alps create an arcing boundary between Switzerland and Italy. Near the bottom right of the image, one of the largest lakes in Europe, Lake Geneva (formally known as Lac Leman), fills a glacier-carved valley in western Switzerland. This natural lake occurs on the Rhone River, upstream of where it makes a sharp southward bend as it leaves the Alps. At the northern edge of the image is a larger, artificial lake: the Netherland's IJsselmeer. Despite its closeness to the North Sea, IJsselmeer is a freshwater lake. It was originally a saltwater inlet at the mouth of the IJssel River, but in the early 1930s, the Dutch built a dike across the inlet. The freshwater flow of the IJssel River flushed out the seawater, forming the new lake. Photo courtesy of NASA.