Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified which Christmas Island is depicted in the image below. The island shown is Kiritimati, also known as “Christmas Island,” in the Pacific Ocean. The text has been updated to correct the error.
If you’re looking for Christmas NASA’s Aqua satellite spotted it in the Northern Pacific Ocean. It’s a coral atoll (a ring-shaped reef, island, or chain of islands made up of coral) in the northern Line Islands and part of the Republic of Kiribati.
When Aqua flew over Kiritimati, also known as Christmas Island, on Nov. 11, 2014, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer took a visible picture of the small atoll. It is located about 141 miles (232 km) north of the Equator and 4,160 miles (6,700 km) from Sydney, Australia.
The island is only 150 square miles (388 square km) in area, smaller than the city of San Francisco, California (which is 231.9 square miles/600.6 square kilometers).
In the Kiribati language, the name “Kiritimati” is a spelling of the English word “Christmas.”