NASA Satellite Scares Up An Eerie Image of Haunted Lakes and Ghost Ships

Just in time for Halloween, NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite presents this "false color" view of portions of Wisconsin and Michigan, acquired on Oct. 30, 2008. Many of the small lakes in the region have supernatural-sounding names, including Devil's Lake, Druid Lake, Ghost Lake, Spider Lake, and Witches Lake in Wisconsin; and Bat Lake, Corpse Pond and Witch Lake in Michigan.The area is bordered on the north by the scarily shaped Lake Superior, where the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald mysteriously sank on the evening of Nov. 10, 1975, during a fierce seasonal storm known as the Witch of November. Legendary sightings years after the wreck occurred, make the Fitzgerald the most famous ghost ship of the Great Lakes.

The area covered by the image measures 275 miles by 403 miles (443 kilometers by 649 kilometers).

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The MISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.