NASA wants your help. Adam Voiland, a writer for the NASA Earth Observatory, is compiling a gallery he calls "Alphabet in the Sky"—letters and other typographical marks seen from space.

Voiland's inspiration was this smoke plume in Canada, spewed from wildfires burning in the Caribou Mountains of northern Alberta. To him, it became an enormous letter ‘V.’ (To me, it’s more of a number 2, if you rotate the image clockwise. Wired did the same but called it a ‘Z.’ What's your vote?)

VIDEO: Why? Tell Me Why! Night-Shining Clouds

“How many other letters have satellites captured momentarily gracing Earth’s atmosphere and oceans?” Voiland asks in his blog, Earth Matters. “This is the first that I’ve noticed, but I have no doubt there are many more to find given the ceaseless mixing and swirling of clouds, smoke, dust, ice and even phytoplankton that constantly occurs across our planet.”

If you’ve seen a letter (or other typographical mark) in a satellite image, leave Voiland a comment in the thread below his blog. The guidelines are pretty simple:

• Send a link to what you’ve found (my understanding is that it really must be a satellite image, not simply an aerial shot)
• Describe the letter or other typographical mark you think you see
• For you typography lovers out there, go ahead and be ambitious: mention what typeface it reminds you of as well.
• Non-English characters are eligible, but please note what the character is and what it’s called—and what it means, if relevant. (Living at the moment in Beijing means lots of wispy Mandarin characters are dancing in my head.)

A great place to start looking is the Discovery News archive. Jason Major chose this image specifically because of its resemblance to a figure-8:

BIG PIC: Phytoplankton Bloom Forms Enormous ‘Figure-8’

And how about the capsized Costa Concordia? From the side (unfortunately), this Italian cruise ship looks a lot like a capital ‘I’ in Trebuchet MS (a san serif font I particularly adore). Or maybe it's a 'J'?

BIG PIC: Satellite Photos Stricken Cruise Ship

I’m betting we can get a lot of mileage out of hurricanes, sinewy rivers and urban landscapes as well. There are at least two interesting ‘C’s, a ‘Q’ and a big ‘X’ in these shots from Haiti:

BIG PIC: Satellite Images of Earthquake Damage in Port-au-Prince

Be creative!

Photo: Smoke plume over northern Canada on July 11, 2012 (NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response)