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Khartoum, Sudan
| Title |
Khartoum, Sudan |
| Description |
Sudan's capital city, Khartoum, translates as "Elephant's Trunk." The name describes the shape of the Nile where the Blue and the White Nile Rivers unite to form the single Nile River that flows northward into Egypt. This image shows the rivers near the end of the dry season. The White Nile (western branch) runs through Sudan from Uganda. The White Nile originates in equatorial regions, where rainfall occurs throughout the year, as a result, it runs at a nearly constant rate throughout the year. The Blue Nile, nearly dry this time of year, flows out of the Ethiopian highlands, where rainfall is more seasonal. The Blue Nile swells in the late summer and early fall with rains from the summer monsoons. The flow at these times can be so great that the volume is too much for the river's channel, causing the Nile to flow backward at the junction. In recent years, floods in Khartoum have occurred in August with heavy monsoon rainfall. (See more images from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=5148 ] and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=5113 ] instruments) Khartoum is one of the largest Muslim cities in North Africa, but it has a fairly short history. Founded as a military outpost in 1821, a Sudanese flag has only flown over the city since 1956. Today, Khartoum is home to more than a million people, including many refugees, both from neighboring countries as well as from an ongoing civil war in southern Sudan. The city has a low profile, dominated by sprawling areas of small buildings that are supported by little infrastructure. Astronaut photograph ISS010-E-23451 [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS010&roll=E&frame=23451 ] was acquired April 7, 2005, with a Kodak 760C digital camera with a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center. The International Space Station Program [ http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html ] supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ ] |
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Earth - Northeast Africa and
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PIA00127
Sol (our sun)
Solid-State Imaging
| Title |
Earth - Northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula was taken from an altitude of about 500,000 kilometers (300,000 miles) by the Galileo spacecraft on December 9, 1992, as it left Earth en route to Jupiter. Visible are most of Egypt (left of center), including the Nile Valley, the Red Sea (slightly above center), Israel, Jordan, and the Arabian Peninsula. In the center, below the coastal cloud, is Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. Somalia (lower right) is partly covered by clouds. |
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Nile River Fluctuations Near
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PIA03420
Sol (our sun)
Multi-Angle Imaging SpectroR
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| Title |
Nile River Fluctuations Near Khartoum, Sudan |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Throughout history, the rising and falling waters of the mighty Nile River have directly impacted the lives of the people who live along its banks. These images of the area around Sudan's capital city of Khartoum capture the river's dynamic nature. Acquired by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer's nadir (vertical-viewing) camera, they display the extent of the Nile waters before and after the onset of the rainy seasons of 2000 (top pair) and 2001 (bottom pair). The images are displayed in "false color", using the camera's near-infrared, green, and blue bands. With this particular spectral combination, water appears in shades of blue and turquoise, and highly vegetated areas show up as bright red. Originating in Uganda and Ethiopia, respectively, the waters of the White Nile (western branch) and Blue Nile (eastern branch) converge at Khartoum (about half-way between image center and the left-hand side), and continue to flow northward as the Great Nile. Although the most obvious feature in these images is the increased width of the White Nile between spring and summer, careful inspection shows that the Great Nile is at its widest in August 2001 (note in particular the area between the clouds near the top of this panel). Heavy rains in the Blue Nile catchment area of the Ethiopian highlands led to a rapid overflow of the river's floodwaters into the main stream of the Great Nile, leading to extensive flooding, the worst effects of which occurred north of Khartoum. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, and the number of people in need of urgent food assistance in Sudan, estimated at three million earlier in the year, was likely to increase with the onset of these floods. South of the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, the area of a cross-hatched appearance is the irrigated plain of El Gezira. The Gezira irrigation scheme uses water from the Makwar Dam (now called the Sennar Dam), located across the Blue Nile south of Khartoum. Among the main agricultural products of this region are cotton, millet, peanuts and fodder crops. Overall prospects for Sudan's 2001 grain crop were already poor prior to the flooding due to a late start of the rainy season in parts of the country. Following two consecutive years of serious drought, precipitation arrived too late to save the grain harvest that normally begins in late August. Lower harvests for the past two years coupled with depletion of stocks have led to a rise in cereal prices, reducing access to food for the Sudan's poorer citizens, already suffering from the effects of Africa's longest running civil war. Each of these images represents an area of about 130 kilometers x 150 kilometers. The data were obtained during Terra orbits 1922, 3553, 7281, and 8912. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra, satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. For more information: http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov ] |
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| General Description |
STS-87 Shuttle Mission Imagery |
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Sudan as seen from the Apoll
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| Title |
Sudan as seen from the Apollo 7 spacecraft |
| Description |
Sudan, showing White Nile and Blue Nile rivers below Khartoum, as seen from the Apollo 7 spacecraft during its 44th revolution of the earth. Photographed from an altitude of 130 nautical miles, at ground elapsed time of 69 hours and 10 minutes. Note quilted-patchwork effect created by irrigated cultivated land. |
| Date Taken |
1968-10-14 |
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Areas of Sudan and Egypt as
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| Title |
Areas of Sudan and Egypt as seen from Gemini 11 spacecraft |
| Description |
Libyan Desert area of Sudan, foreground, and the United Arab Republic (Egypt), at lower left, as seen from the Gemini 11 spacecraft at an altitude of 300 nautical miles during its 27th revolution of the earth. In view is the Nile River from Biba in Egypt to Khartoum in the Sudan. The Red Sea is in background. At upper left is the Arabian Peninsula. At top right is Ethiopia. Note L-band antenna of the Agena Target Vehicle. |
| Date Taken |
1966-09-14 |
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Nile River, Khartoum, Sudan,
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| Title |
Nile River, Khartoum, Sudan, Africa |
| Description |
This view shows the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile rivers to form the Nile River at Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan (15.5N, 32.5E). The White Nile comes from the south and drains the Sudd swamp and African Rift Valley while the Blue Nile comes from the southeast draining the Ethiopian highlands. The herringbone field patterns to the south of the city are agricultural fields where cotton is the main crop. |
| Date Taken |
1983-04-09 |
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Confluence of the White and
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| Title |
Confluence of the White and Blue Nile Rivers at Khartoum, Sudan |
| Description |
The Blue Nile River flowing from Lake Tana to the east and the larger White Nile River flowing from the Rift Valley region combine to form the Nile River at Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan (15.5N, 33.0E). The rivers normally flow out of phase as a result of the differing maximum precipitation periods of their watersheds. The differing flow periods allows longer use of the river for agriculture irrigation in the fields south of the city. |
| Date Taken |
1990-01-15 |
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Agricultural fields, Khartou
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| Title |
Agricultural fields, Khartoum, Sudan, Africa |
| Description |
This herringbone pattern of irrigated agricultural fields near Khartoum, Sudan (14.5N, 33.5E) is very distinctive in both size and shape. The region contains thousands of these rectangular fields bounded by canals which carry water from both the White and Blue Nile Rivers. A crop rotation system is used so that some fields are in cotton, millit, sorghum or fallow to conserve moisture and control weeds and insects. See also STS049-96-003. |
| Date Taken |
1992-05-16 |
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Agricultural fields, Khartou
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| Title |
Agricultural fields, Khartoum, Sudan, Africa Description: This herringbone pattern of irrigated agricultural fields near Khartoum, Sudan (14.5N, 33.5E) was imaged with infrared film as part an experiment to compare the merits of color film versus color in |
| Description |
This herringbone pattern of irrigated agricultural fields near Khartoum, Sudan (14.5N, 33.5E) was imaged with infrared film as part an experiment to compare the merits of color film versus color infrared film. Color film presents the image as it appears to the eye whereas color infrared film has an excellent haze penetration and vegetation definition capability. See color film image STS049-77-072 for a detailed scene description. |
| Date Taken |
1992-05-16 |
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Sudan's Blue and While Nile,
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| Title |
Sudan's Blue and While Nile, Africa |
| Description |
This vertical view shows the smaller Blue Nile merging with the While Nile. Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, lies at the confluence (on both sides of the Nile). Water from the two rivers allow vast areas in between to be irrigated. The checker-board pattern along the top of the frame is just a small part of the El Gezira cotton-growing project, one of the largest in the world. |
| Date Taken |
1995-02-11 |
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Sudan, Africa as seen from S
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| Title |
Sudan, Africa as seen from STS-66 shuttle Atlantis |
| Description |
Agricultural patterns are distinctly visible in this near-vertical false color infrared photography taken in November 1994. The area depicted on the photograph is south of Khartoum between the White and Blue Nile Rivers. By far the most important irrigation project in sub-Saharan Africa, both large and small scale agricultural enterprises have been developed using water transported from the perennial Nile Rivers. Hundreds of small rectangular fields and water-filled canals can be seen in this photograph. |
| Date Taken |
1994-11-14 |
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