File:Fog in the Mountains of the Balkan Peninsula (MODIS).jpg

English: The term “Balkan” comes from a Turkish word that refers to a chain of wooded mountains—a perfect descriptor for the terrain of Southeastern Europe’s Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan Mountains sit in the eastern portion of the peninsula, but many other ranges course across the region. For example, three ranges, the Rodope, Carpathian, and Dinaric, meet in the southern part of Serbia, while, just to the south, the mountains of Kosovo are said to be the most rugged and impassable in all of Europe.

Not only are the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula famous for their beauty, the frequent morning fog delights photographers and tourists who appreciate the ethereal scenes created by delicate fog over forests and field. Fog is essentially a cloud that exists near the Earth’s surface. It can form over land or water, and frequently forms in valleys, especially in cool temperatures.

On December 26, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image capturing widespread morning fog over the mountain valleys on the Balkan Peninsula. The largest fog banks lie over Kosovo, located in the center of the image, but also appear over Serbia (north and east), Macedonia (south), and Montenegro (west).