The Alps, Europe's largest mountain range

The Alps, Europe’s largest mountain range Today’s Image of the Day from the European Space Agency features the highest and most extensive mountain range in Europe, the Alps.

The region is home to about 20 million people in eight different European countries, including France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. 

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps, rising 15,774 feet above the sea level. It is the second-highest mountain in Europe. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world’s population.

The image was captured on February 16, 2019 by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite.

Image Credit: ESA 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer