The European Space Agency has opened up its collection of satellite imagery and made some of the higher resolution images available on line. Previously, available images from ESA were scaled down and of a low resolution. More than 1,000 are currently online. The coverage is very spotty - don’t look for a collection that seamlessly covers the earth - but you may luck out in finding your area of interest. Some of the files are very large - up to 200 MB in size - and all come in a tif format (no world file). The collection is quite spectacular and provides a good alternative to NASA’s collections at Visible Earth and Earth Observatory.

Read ESA’s own press release on the collection.

By way of La Cartoteca