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Home Reef Reborn
| title |
Home Reef Reborn |
| description |
In the South Pacific, south of Late Island along the Tofua volcanic arc in Tonga, the volcanic island Home Reef is being re-born. The island is thought to have emerged after a volcanic eruption in mid-August that also spewed large amounts of floating pumice into Tongan waters and swept across to Fiji about 350 km (220 miles) to the west of where the new island formed. In 2004, a similar eruption created an ephemeral island about 0.5 by 1.5 km (0.3 by 0.9 miles) in size, it was no longer visible in an ASTER image acquired November 2005. This simulated natural color image shows the vegetation-covered stratovolcanic island of Late Island in the upper right. Home Reef is found in the lower left. The two bluish plumes are hot seawater that is laden with volcanic ash and chemicals, the larger one can be traced for more than 14 km (8.4 miles) to the east. The image was acquired Oct. 10, 2006 and covers an area of 24.3 by 30.2 km. It is located at 18.9 degrees south latitude, 174.7 degrees west longitude. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitors the changing surface of our planet. It is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team |
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Gullies in Sirenum Terra, Ma
…
| title |
Gullies in Sirenum Terra, Mars |
| date |
10.03.2006 |
| description |
This enhanced-color view shows gullies in an unnamed crater in the Terra Sirenum region of Mars. It is a sub-image from a larger view imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Oct. 3, 2006. This scene is about 254 meters (about 830 feet) wide. The upper and left regions of this scene are in shadow, yet color variations are still apparent. The high signal to noise ratio of the HiRISE camera allows for colors to be distinguished in shadows. This allows dark features to be identified as true albedo features versus topographical features. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona |
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Evidence for Recent Liquid W
…
| Title |
Evidence for Recent Liquid Water on Mars |
| Full Description |
Gullies eroded into the wall of a meteor impact crater in Noachis Terra. This high resolution view (top left) from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) shows channels and associated aprons of debris that are interpreted to have formed by groundwater seepage, surface runoff, and debris flow. The lack of small craters superimposed on the channels and apron deposits indicates that these features are geologically young. It is possible that these gullies indicate that liquid water is present within the martian subsurface today. The MOC image was acquired on September 28, 1999. The scene covers an area approximately 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) wide by 6.7 km (4.1 mi) high (note, the aspect ratio is 1.5 to 1.0). Sunlight illuminates this area from the upper left. The image is located near 54.8S, 342.5W. The context image (above) shows the location of the MOC image on the south-facing wall of an impact crater approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter. The context picture was obtained by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1980 and is illuminated from the upper left. The large mound on the floor of the crater in the context view is a sand dune field. The Mars Orbiter Camera high resolution images are taken black-and-white (grayscale), the color seen here has been synthesized from the colors of Mars observed by the MOC wide angle cameras and by the Viking Orbiters in the late 1970s. A brief description of how the color was generated: The MOC narrow angle camera only takes grayscale (black and white) pictures. To create the color versions seen here, we have taken much lower resolution red and blue images acquired by the MOC's wide angle cameras, and by the Viking Orbiter cameras in the 1970s, synthesized a green image by averaging red and blue, and created a pallete of colors that represent the range of colors on Mars. We then use a relationship that correlates color and brightness to assign a color to each gray level. This is only a crude approximation of martian color. It is likely Mars would not look like this to a human observer at Mars. |
| Date |
06/22/2000 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
A Summer View of Russia's Le
…
| Title |
A Summer View of Russia's Lena Delta and Olenek River |
| Description |
These views of the Russian Arctic were acquired by NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on July 11, 2004. The brief arctic summer had transformed the frozen tundra and the thousands of lakes, channels, and rivers of the Lena Delta into a fertile wetland, and the usual blanket of thick snow had melted from the vast plains and taiga forests. The images show an area in the northern part of the Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia. The Olenek River wends northeast from the bottom of the images to the upper left, and the delta through which the mighty Lena River empties into the Laptev Sea dominate the top portions of the images. Creating accurate maps of vegetation structure is essential for understanding the seasonal exchanges of energy and water at the Earth's surface and for preserving biodiversity. The left-hand image is a natural-color image from MISR's nadir (vertical-viewing) camera, in which the rivers appear murky due to sediment, and photosynthetically active vegetation appears green. The center image is also from MISR's nadir camera, but is a false-color view in which the predominant red color is due to the brightness of vegetation at near-infrared wavelengths. Apart from the Lena Delta, the most photosynthetically active regions are within the lower half of the image and throughout the great stretch of land that curves across the Olenek River.  The relatively barren ranges of the Volyoi Mountains appear as the pale tan-colored area to the right of image center. The right-hand image is a multiangle, false-color view made from the red band data of the 60-degree-backward, nadir, and 60-degree-forward cameras, displayed as red, green and blue, respectively. Water appears blue in this image because sun glint makes smooth, wet surfaces look brighter at the forward camera's view angle. Much of the landscape and many low clouds appear purple because these surfaces are both forward and backward scattering, and clouds that are further from the surface appear in a different spot for each view angle, creating a rainbow-like appearance. The highly vegetated region in the natural-color nadir image exhibits a faint greenish hue in the multi-angle composite. This subtle effect suggests that the nadir camera is observing more of the brighter, underlying surface than the oblique cameras, providing information about the distribution and density of trees and shrubs in this area. The Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously, and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. The MISR Browse Image Viewer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/MISRBR/ ], provides access to low-resolution true-color versions of these images. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 24273. The panels cover an area of about 230 kilometers x 420 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 30 to 34 within World Reference System-2 path 134. 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. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Text by Clare Averill (Raytheon/JPL). |
|
Cloud Heights of Frances and
…
| Title |
Cloud Heights of Frances and Ivan |
| Description |
NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov ] (MISR) captured these images and cloud-top height retrievals of Hurricane Frances on September 4, 2004, when the eye sat just off the coast of eastern Florida, and Hurricane Ivan on September 5, after the storm had devastated Grenada and was heading toward the central and western Caribbean. Hurricane Frances made landfall in the early hours of September 5, and was downgraded to Tropical Storm status as it swept inland through the Florida panhandle and continued northward. Following on the heels of Frances is Hurricane Ivan, which is on record as the strongest tropical hurricane to form at such a low latitude in the Atlantic, and was the most powerful storm to have hit the Caribbean in nearly a decade. The ability of forecasters to predict the intensity and amount of rainfall associated with hurricanes still requires improvement, especially on the 24- to 48-hour timescale vital for disaster planning. To improve the operational models used to make hurricane forecasts, scientists need to better understand the multi-scale interactions at the cloud, mesoscale and synoptic scales that lead to hurricane intensification and dissipation, as well as the various physical processes that determine hurricane intensity and rainfall distributions. Because these uncertainties with regard to how to represent cloud processes still exist, it is vital that the model findings be evaluated against hurricane observations whenever possible. Two-dimensional maps of cloud height such as those shown here offer an unprecedented opportunity for comparing simulated cloud fields against actual hurricane observations. The lefthand panel in each image pair is a natural-color view from MISR's nadir camera. The righthand panels are cloud-top height retrievals produced by automated computer recognition of the distinctive spatial features between images acquired at different view angles. These results indicate that at the time that these images were acquired, clouds within Frances and Ivan had attained altitudes of 15-16 kilometers (9-10 miles) above sea level, respectively. The height fields pictured here are uncorrected for the effects of cloud motion. Wind-corrected heights (which have higher accuracy but coarser spatial coverage) are within about 1 kilometer of the heights shown here. (Visit the Earth Observatory's Natural Hazards Severe Storms [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?topic=storm ] section to view more recent images of Hurricanes Ivan and Frances.) The MISR observes the daylit Earth continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82° north and 82° south latitude. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ], orbits 25081 and 25094. The panels cover an area of 380 kilometers x 924 kilometers, and utilize data from within blocks 65 to 87 within World Reference System-2 paths 14 and 222, respectively. 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. NASA image courtesy GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov ] Text acknowledgment: Clare Averill (Raytheon/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Greg McFarquhar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). |
|
Dust Shrouds the Eastern Med
…
| Title |
Dust Shrouds the Eastern Mediterranean |
| Description |
On October 18, 2002, a large dust plume extended across countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Information on the horizontal and vertical extent of the dust are provided by these views from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). The left-hand panel portrays the scene as viewed by the instrument's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera. Here only some of the dust over eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey can be discerned. The dust is much more obvious in the center panel, which is a view from MISR's most steeply forward-looking camera. In addition, this perspective makes shadows cast by clouds onto the dust layer more apparent, providing a visual clue that the dust is at a lower altitude than these clouds. The right-hand panel is an elevation field derived from automated MISR stereoscopic processing, in which the heights of clouds and certain parts of the dust plume are retrieved. Because the stereoscopic approach makes use of features within the images that exhibit spatial contrast, heights for much of the dust plume (as well as the ocean surface) could not be retrieved, and these areas are shown in dark gray. Clouds within the image area are situated between about 2 and 5.5 kilometers above sea level, and the dust is located below most of the cloud, at heights of about 1.5 kilometers or less. When the stereo retrieval determines that a location is at a near-surface altitude, digital terrain elevation data are displayed instead. The highest clouds in this scene appear as the orange and red areas, and mountainous regions are displayed in light blue and green. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously from pole to pole, and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. The MISR Browse Image Viewer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/MISRBR/ ] provides access to low-resolution true-color versions of these images. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 15072. The panels cover an area of about 380 kilometers x 827 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 58 to 65 within World Reference System-2 path 174. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Text by Clare Averill (Acro Service Corporation/Jet Propulsion Laboratory). |
|
Dust Shrouds the Eastern Med
…
| Title |
Dust Shrouds the Eastern Mediterranean |
| Description |
On October 18, 2002, a large dust plume extended across countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Information on the horizontal and vertical extent of the dust are provided by these views from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). The left-hand panel portrays the scene as viewed by the instrument's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera. Here only some of the dust over eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey can be discerned. The dust is much more obvious in the center panel, which is a view from MISR's most steeply forward-looking camera. In addition, this perspective makes shadows cast by clouds onto the dust layer more apparent, providing a visual clue that the dust is at a lower altitude than these clouds. The right-hand panel is an elevation field derived from automated MISR stereoscopic processing, in which the heights of clouds and certain parts of the dust plume are retrieved. Because the stereoscopic approach makes use of features within the images that exhibit spatial contrast, heights for much of the dust plume (as well as the ocean surface) could not be retrieved, and these areas are shown in dark gray. Clouds within the image area are situated between about 2 and 5.5 kilometers above sea level, and the dust is located below most of the cloud, at heights of about 1.5 kilometers or less. When the stereo retrieval determines that a location is at a near-surface altitude, digital terrain elevation data are displayed instead. The highest clouds in this scene appear as the orange and red areas, and mountainous regions are displayed in light blue and green. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously from pole to pole, and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. The MISR Browse Image Viewer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/MISRBR/ ] provides access to low-resolution true-color versions of these images. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 15072. The panels cover an area of about 380 kilometers x 827 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 58 to 65 within World Reference System-2 path 174. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Text by Clare Averill (Acro Service Corporation/Jet Propulsion Laboratory). |
|
Hurricane Katrina
| Title |
Hurricane Katrina |
| Description |
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. Images and movie courtesy of NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. Caption details provided by Clare Averill (Raytheon ITSS/Jet Propulsion Laboratory), David J. Diner, Mike Garay and Ralph Kahn (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Greg McFarquhar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)., MISR stereo-height estimates (not shown here) indicate that the highest clouds reach 18-19 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. The stereo anaglyph shows relative height variations and enhances the appearance of thin clouds, such as those that mark the series of gravity waves north-east of the eyewall. Atmospheric gravity waves are caused by air displacements in an otherwise stable air layer. In this case, the gravity waves are above the hurricane arms in the upper troposphere, and were probably generated as the towering storm updraft tried to push into the stable air between the troposphere and the stratosphere (known as the tropopause). Some of Katrina's cloud tops were about 2 kilometers above the tropopause. Such high "overshooting tops" are also characteristic of strong and rapidly growing storms. The animation progresses from MISR's most forward-pointing camera, which views the scene first, to the most backward-pointing camera, which views the scene last. It was created by aligning the views from all 9 cameras using the high clouds within the eyewall as a reference point. North is at the top. The convective cloud towers, especially those along the eastern sides of the inner and outer eyewalls, attain the highest altitudes and indicate that the storm is strengthening. Those areas that do not exhibit cloud-top convection are clouds experiencing vertical wind shear, and tend to be lower than the towering cloud structures. The vertical and horizontal development of the convective clouds and the formation of an outer ring of growing clouds (referred to as an "eyewall replacement cycle") also indicate rapid strengthening. During this stage of hurricane development, an outer band of clouds may gradually move inward to replace the existing hurricane eyewall, causing the central pressure to increase and weaken the storm in the short term. However, eyewall replacement may sometimes be a forerunner for rapid strengthening in the longer term. This was the case with Hurricane Katrina, whose central pressure increased slightly on Saturday, but then dropped again significantly on Sunday when Katrina became a Category 5 storm. Observing the development of a concentric eyewall at this spatial and temporal resolution is a unique feature of these MISR observations. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously, viewing the entire globe between 82 degrees North and 82 degrees South latitude every nine days. The still images each cover an area of about 827 kilometers by 380 kilometers, and the animation covers an area of about 202 kilometers by 214 kilometers. The data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 30280 and utilize data from blocks 69 to 74 within World Reference System-2 path 17. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's, This image and animation from NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) show the strong convective development of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday, August 27, as it moved west through the Gulf of Mexico. Over 7 minutes during which all 9 MISR cameras viewed Katrina, the animation captures the cloud-top sides, the counterclockwise rotation of the eyewall, and the bubbling growth of the towering cloud structures. At this time, Katrina was undergoing rapid development— it had just been upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, and within 24 hours it would reach Category 5. On Monday morning when the eyewall made landfall over the United States, it was a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most powerful and destructive storms on record for the Atlantic Basin. The image above is a false-color view (near-infrared, red, and blue wavelengths of reflected light displayed as red, green and blue) from MISR's nadir (pointing straight down) camera. In the image above, north is up. The high resolution image linked above shows a wider view of this false-color image, with north to the left. The vegetated Alabama coast in the upper left-hand corner in this high-resolution image appears in red hues. The bottom panel in the high-resolution image is a 3-D stereo anaglyph created with red band data from MISR's 70-degree-forward-viewing and 60-degree-forward-viewing cameras, displayed as red and green/blue, respectively. To observe the height variations in 3-D, you will need to use red/blue glasses. [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/Help/VendorList.html#Glasses ] |
|
Hurricane Katrina
| Title |
Hurricane Katrina |
| Description |
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. Images and movie courtesy of NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. Caption details provided by Clare Averill (Raytheon ITSS/Jet Propulsion Laboratory), David J. Diner, Mike Garay and Ralph Kahn (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Greg McFarquhar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)., MISR stereo-height estimates (not shown here) indicate that the highest clouds reach 18-19 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. The stereo anaglyph shows relative height variations and enhances the appearance of thin clouds, such as those that mark the series of gravity waves north-east of the eyewall. Atmospheric gravity waves are caused by air displacements in an otherwise stable air layer. In this case, the gravity waves are above the hurricane arms in the upper troposphere, and were probably generated as the towering storm updraft tried to push into the stable air between the troposphere and the stratosphere (known as the tropopause). Some of Katrina's cloud tops were about 2 kilometers above the tropopause. Such high "overshooting tops" are also characteristic of strong and rapidly growing storms. The animation progresses from MISR's most forward-pointing camera, which views the scene first, to the most backward-pointing camera, which views the scene last. It was created by aligning the views from all 9 cameras using the high clouds within the eyewall as a reference point. North is at the top. The convective cloud towers, especially those along the eastern sides of the inner and outer eyewalls, attain the highest altitudes and indicate that the storm is strengthening. Those areas that do not exhibit cloud-top convection are clouds experiencing vertical wind shear, and tend to be lower than the towering cloud structures. The vertical and horizontal development of the convective clouds and the formation of an outer ring of growing clouds (referred to as an "eyewall replacement cycle") also indicate rapid strengthening. During this stage of hurricane development, an outer band of clouds may gradually move inward to replace the existing hurricane eyewall, causing the central pressure to increase and weaken the storm in the short term. However, eyewall replacement may sometimes be a forerunner for rapid strengthening in the longer term. This was the case with Hurricane Katrina, whose central pressure increased slightly on Saturday, but then dropped again significantly on Sunday when Katrina became a Category 5 storm. Observing the development of a concentric eyewall at this spatial and temporal resolution is a unique feature of these MISR observations. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously, viewing the entire globe between 82 degrees North and 82 degrees South latitude every nine days. The still images each cover an area of about 827 kilometers by 380 kilometers, and the animation covers an area of about 202 kilometers by 214 kilometers. The data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 30280 and utilize data from blocks 69 to 74 within World Reference System-2 path 17. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's, This image and animation from NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) show the strong convective development of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday, August 27, as it moved west through the Gulf of Mexico. Over 7 minutes during which all 9 MISR cameras viewed Katrina, the animation captures the cloud-top sides, the counterclockwise rotation of the eyewall, and the bubbling growth of the towering cloud structures. At this time, Katrina was undergoing rapid development— it had just been upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, and within 24 hours it would reach Category 5. On Monday morning when the eyewall made landfall over the United States, it was a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most powerful and destructive storms on record for the Atlantic Basin. The image above is a false-color view (near-infrared, red, and blue wavelengths of reflected light displayed as red, green and blue) from MISR's nadir (pointing straight down) camera. In the image above, north is up. The high resolution image linked above shows a wider view of this false-color image, with north to the left. The vegetated Alabama coast in the upper left-hand corner in this high-resolution image appears in red hues. The bottom panel in the high-resolution image is a 3-D stereo anaglyph created with red band data from MISR's 70-degree-forward-viewing and 60-degree-forward-viewing cameras, displayed as red and green/blue, respectively. To observe the height variations in 3-D, you will need to use red/blue glasses. [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/Help/VendorList.html#Glasses ] |
|
Hurricane Katrina
| Title |
Hurricane Katrina |
| Description |
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. Images and movie courtesy of NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. Caption details provided by Clare Averill (Raytheon ITSS/Jet Propulsion Laboratory), David J. Diner, Mike Garay and Ralph Kahn (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Greg McFarquhar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)., MISR stereo-height estimates (not shown here) indicate that the highest clouds reach 18-19 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. The stereo anaglyph shows relative height variations and enhances the appearance of thin clouds, such as those that mark the series of gravity waves north-east of the eyewall. Atmospheric gravity waves are caused by air displacements in an otherwise stable air layer. In this case, the gravity waves are above the hurricane arms in the upper troposphere, and were probably generated as the towering storm updraft tried to push into the stable air between the troposphere and the stratosphere (known as the tropopause). Some of Katrina's cloud tops were about 2 kilometers above the tropopause. Such high "overshooting tops" are also characteristic of strong and rapidly growing storms. The animation progresses from MISR's most forward-pointing camera, which views the scene first, to the most backward-pointing camera, which views the scene last. It was created by aligning the views from all 9 cameras using the high clouds within the eyewall as a reference point. North is at the top. The convective cloud towers, especially those along the eastern sides of the inner and outer eyewalls, attain the highest altitudes and indicate that the storm is strengthening. Those areas that do not exhibit cloud-top convection are clouds experiencing vertical wind shear, and tend to be lower than the towering cloud structures. The vertical and horizontal development of the convective clouds and the formation of an outer ring of growing clouds (referred to as an "eyewall replacement cycle") also indicate rapid strengthening. During this stage of hurricane development, an outer band of clouds may gradually move inward to replace the existing hurricane eyewall, causing the central pressure to increase and weaken the storm in the short term. However, eyewall replacement may sometimes be a forerunner for rapid strengthening in the longer term. This was the case with Hurricane Katrina, whose central pressure increased slightly on Saturday, but then dropped again significantly on Sunday when Katrina became a Category 5 storm. Observing the development of a concentric eyewall at this spatial and temporal resolution is a unique feature of these MISR observations. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously, viewing the entire globe between 82 degrees North and 82 degrees South latitude every nine days. The still images each cover an area of about 827 kilometers by 380 kilometers, and the animation covers an area of about 202 kilometers by 214 kilometers. The data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 30280 and utilize data from blocks 69 to 74 within World Reference System-2 path 17. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's, This image and animation from NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) show the strong convective development of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday, August 27, as it moved west through the Gulf of Mexico. Over 7 minutes during which all 9 MISR cameras viewed Katrina, the animation captures the cloud-top sides, the counterclockwise rotation of the eyewall, and the bubbling growth of the towering cloud structures. At this time, Katrina was undergoing rapid development— it had just been upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, and within 24 hours it would reach Category 5. On Monday morning when the eyewall made landfall over the United States, it was a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most powerful and destructive storms on record for the Atlantic Basin. The image above is a false-color view (near-infrared, red, and blue wavelengths of reflected light displayed as red, green and blue) from MISR's nadir (pointing straight down) camera. In the image above, north is up. The high resolution image linked above shows a wider view of this false-color image, with north to the left. The vegetated Alabama coast in the upper left-hand corner in this high-resolution image appears in red hues. The bottom panel in the high-resolution image is a 3-D stereo anaglyph created with red band data from MISR's 70-degree-forward-viewing and 60-degree-forward-viewing cameras, displayed as red and green/blue, respectively. To observe the height variations in 3-D, you will need to use red/blue glasses. [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/Help/VendorList.html#Glasses ] |
|
East Coast Snow Storm
| Title |
East Coast Snow Storm |
| Description |
browse image of orbit 15805. (700 KB JPEG) The snowstorm which swept across the eastern United States on December 4 and 5 also brought the season's first snow to parts of the south and southern Appalachia. The extent of snow cover over central Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and Virginia are apparent in this view from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). This natural-color image was captured by MISR's downward-looking (nadir) camera on December 7, 2002. The Appalachians are bounded by the Blue Ridge mountain belt along the east and the Appalachian Plateau along the west. Valleys and ridges between the higher elevation areas retain the green and reddish-brown hues of autumn, and many rivers and lakes appear blue and unfrozen. The highest peak in the eastern United States, Mount Mitchell, is found in North Carolina's western tip, near the Great Smoky Mountains (the dark-colored range at lower right). The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. The MISR Browse Image Viewer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/MISRBR/ ] provides access to low-resolution true-color versions of these images. This data product was generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 15805. The image covers an area of 347 kilometers x 279 kilometers, and utilizes data from blocks 60 to 62 within World Reference System-2 path 19. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Text by Clare Averill (Acro Service Corporation/Jet Propulsion Laboratory). |
|
Eruption of Sicily's Mt. Etn
…
| Title |
Eruption of Sicily's Mt. Etna |
| Description |
Italy?s Mount Etna is the focus of this 3-D perspective view made from data collected by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal and Emission Radiometer (ASTER), flying aboard NASA?s Terra spacecraft, and overlaid on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topography. The image is looking south with dark lava flows from the 1600s (center) to 1981 (long flow at lower right) visible in the foreground and the summit of Etna above. The city of Catania is barely visible behind Etna on the bay at the upper left. In late October 2002, Etna erupted again, sending lava flows down the south and east sides of the volcano, out of sight in this view. In addition to the terrestrial applications of these data for understanding active volcanoes and hazards associated with them such as lava flows and explosive eruptions, geologists studying Mars find these data useful as an analog to martian landforms and geologic processes. In late September 2002, a field conference with the theme of Terrestrial Analogs to Mars focused on Mount Etna, allowing Mars geologists to see in person the types of features they can only sample remotely. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by SRTM aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb. 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA?s Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C. Size: Varies across scene Location: 38 degrees North latitude, 15.5 degrees East longitude Orientation: Looking south Image Data: ASTER bands 2, 3, 1 as red, green, blue, respectively. Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arc-second (30 meters or 98 feet) Date Acquired: February 2000 (SRTM), July 29, 2001 (ASTER) Image courtesy ASTER and SRTM Teams, NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
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Eruption of Sicily's Mt. Etn
…
| Title |
Eruption of Sicily's Mt. Etna |
| Description |
Italy?s Aeolian Islands and Mount Etna are the focus of this 3-D perspective view made from an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal and Emission Radiometer (ASTER) image from NASA?s Terra spacecraft and overlaid on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topography. The image is looking south with the islands of Lipari and Vulcano in the foreground and Etna with its dark lava flows on the skyline. Vulcano also hosts an active volcano, the cone of which is prominent. In late October 2002, Etna erupted again, sending lava flows down the south and east sides of the volcano, out of sight in this view. In addition to the terrestrial applications of these data for understanding active volcanoes and hazards associated with them such as lava flows and explosive eruptions, geologists studying Mars find these data useful as an analog to martian landforms and geologic processes. In late September 2002, a field conference with the theme of Terrestrial Analogs to Mars focused on Mount Etna allowing Mars geologists to see in person the types of features they can only sample remotely. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by SRTM aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb. 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of the Earth?s surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA?s Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C. Size: Varies across scene Location: 38.25 degrees North latitude, 15 degrees East longitude Orientation: Looking south Image Data: ASTER bands 2, 3, 1 as red, green, blue, respectively. Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arc-second (30 meters or 98 feet) Date Acquired: February 2000 (SRTM), July 29, 2001 (ASTER) Image courtesy ASTER and SRTM Teams, NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
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MISR Instrument Animations
| Title |
MISR Instrument Animations |
| Description |
Animation of MISR orbit coverage (460k) Animation of MISR data collection (773k) No instrument like the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) has flown in space before. Viewing the sunlit Earth simultaneously at nine widely spaced angles, MISR collects global images with high spatial detail in four colors at every angle. These images are carefully calibrated to provide accurate measures of the brightness, contrast, and color of reflected sunlight. The change in reflection at different view angles affords the means to distinguish different types of atmospheric particles (aerosols), cloud forms, and land surface covers. Combined with stereoscopic techniques, this enables construction of 3-dimensional models and more accurate estimates of the total amount of sunlight reflected by Earth's diverse environments. MISR provides new types of information for scientists studying Earth's climate, such as the partitioning of energy and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere, and the regional and global impacts of different types of atmospheric particles and clouds on climate. MISR was built for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is part of NASA's Terra spacecraft, launched into a polar orbit around Earth on 18 December, 1999. For more inforamtion see the MISR web site. Animations courtesy JPL/Caltech |
|
MISR Instrument Animations
| Title |
MISR Instrument Animations |
| Description |
Animation of MISR orbit coverage (460k) Animation of MISR data collection (773k) No instrument like the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) has flown in space before. Viewing the sunlit Earth simultaneously at nine widely spaced angles, MISR collects global images with high spatial detail in four colors at every angle. These images are carefully calibrated to provide accurate measures of the brightness, contrast, and color of reflected sunlight. The change in reflection at different view angles affords the means to distinguish different types of atmospheric particles (aerosols), cloud forms, and land surface covers. Combined with stereoscopic techniques, this enables construction of 3-dimensional models and more accurate estimates of the total amount of sunlight reflected by Earth's diverse environments. MISR provides new types of information for scientists studying Earth's climate, such as the partitioning of energy and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere, and the regional and global impacts of different types of atmospheric particles and clouds on climate. MISR was built for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is part of NASA's Terra spacecraft, launched into a polar orbit around Earth on 18 December, 1999. For more inforamtion see the MISR web site. Animations courtesy JPL/Caltech |
|
MISR Instrument Animations
| Title |
MISR Instrument Animations |
| Description |
Animation of MISR orbit coverage (460k) Animation of MISR data collection (773k) No instrument like the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) has flown in space before. Viewing the sunlit Earth simultaneously at nine widely spaced angles, MISR collects global images with high spatial detail in four colors at every angle. These images are carefully calibrated to provide accurate measures of the brightness, contrast, and color of reflected sunlight. The change in reflection at different view angles affords the means to distinguish different types of atmospheric particles (aerosols), cloud forms, and land surface covers. Combined with stereoscopic techniques, this enables construction of 3-dimensional models and more accurate estimates of the total amount of sunlight reflected by Earth's diverse environments. MISR provides new types of information for scientists studying Earth's climate, such as the partitioning of energy and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere, and the regional and global impacts of different types of atmospheric particles and clouds on climate. MISR was built for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is part of NASA's Terra spacecraft, launched into a polar orbit around Earth on 18 December, 1999. For more inforamtion see the MISR web site. Animations courtesy JPL/Caltech |
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Plume from Ol Doinyo Lengai
| Title |
Plume from Ol Doinyo Lengai |
| Description |
In early September 2007, Tanzania's Ol Doinyo Lengai Volcano erupted, sending a cloud of ash into the atmosphere. On September 4, 2007, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ] satellite captured this image of the volcano sending a plume of ash and steam southward. The volcanic plume appears pale blue-gray, distinct near the summit, and growing more diffuse to the south. On the land surface, green indicates vegetation, and beige and gray indicate bare or thinly vegetated ground. The charcoal-colored stains on the volcano's flanks appear to be lava, but they are actually burn scars left behind by fires that were spawned by fast-flowing, narrow rivers of lava ejected by the volcano. An explosive eruption of ash and steam is rare for Ol Doinyo Lengai. Typically, volcanic activity at the volcano consists of lava flows that are restricted to the summit crater. This eruption, however, sent ash downwind at least 18 kilometers (11 miles).Ol Doinyo Lengai [ http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0202-12= ] is an unusual volcano. Like many other volcanoes on Earth, it is a stratovolcano composed of alternating layers of hardened lava, solidified ash, and rocks from previous eruptions. Unlike other volcanoes, however, Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only active volcano on Earth known to produce natrocarbonatite lava. Natrocarbonatite has a relatively low temperature, about 500 to 600 degrees Celsius (930 to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to typical lavas, which are about 700 to 1,200 degrees Celsius (1,300 to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit). Although still hot enough to burn much of what it directly touches, this lava is cool enough to allow close-up inspection without the routine layers of protective gear that volcanologists use elsewhere. But while it is cooler than other lavas, natrocarbonatite lava is also less viscous. Its more fluid consistency means this lava is also faster than other lavas, in fact, it can flow faster than a person can run. Natrocarbonatite lava is composed of minerals that react easily with atmospheric moisture, and exposed lava begins to lighten shortly after eruption. You can download a 15-meter-resolution KMZ file of Ol Doinyo Lengai [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/oldoinyo_ast_2007247.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Thanks to Greg Vaughan, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for image interpretation. |
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Rice Cultivation in Northwes
…
| Title |
Rice Cultivation in Northwest Italy |
| Description |
The lowlands of Lombardy and Piedmont in northwest Italy are some of the most highly developed irrigation areas in the world. Irrigated lands cover at least 160,000 acres in this part of Italy, where rice is the most important crop. These views of the region were acquired on May 8, 2005, by NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). The multiple viewing angles provided by MISR's nine cameras make it possible to tell wet surfaces, including flooded lands, from other surfaces, and they also make cities easy to locate. The left-hand image is a natural-color view acquired by MISR's downward-looking (nadir) camera, and the right-hand image is a combination of red band data from MISR's 60-degree-backward-, nadir, and 60-degree-forward-viewing cameras. (Red band is what scientists call the "channel" on the sensor that detects red light.) Color changes indicate surface texture, which is influenced by terrain, vegetation structure, soil type, and surface wetness. Wet surfaces or areas with standing water appear in blue or purple-blue hues. The purple-blue areas that dominate the center-left part of the image are part of the extensive irrigation network that exists throughout the plains and meadows of the region. Cities with tall buildings appear in red-orange hues. In this type of image, the city of Milan is the most obvious. The small orange area in the center of the purple inundated area indicates the location of Vercelli, and the larger city of Milan is the orange area to the northeast, on the other side of the Ticino River. To a lesser extent, the cities of Novara, Pavia, Galliate, Mortara, and Vigevano are also identifiable by their orange hues. MISR can tell various surface features like cities or irrigated areas apart because of the way surfaces reflect light. A smooth water surface tends to reflect sunlight away from the Sun. This effect is most apparent when a satellite views the surface with the Sun in front of the camera. Similarly, rough surfaces tend to reflect light back towards the Sun, and this "backward scattering" is most obvious when a satellites views a surface with the Sun behind the camera. Clouds present over the high country to the west of the Lago Maggiore (upper left corner) and along the coast of the Golfo di Genova (bottom) appear in a different spot for each view angle, creating a rainbow-like appearance. Mountains also have a "wavy" look in the multi-angle combination because, like clouds, their height above the surface makes them appear in a different spot in each camera's view angle. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously, viewing the entire globe between 82 degrees North and 82 degrees South latitude every nine days. This image covers an area of about 131 kilometers by 191 kilometers. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 28660 and utilize data from block 54 within World Reference System-2 path 193. MISR was, built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] Text by Clare Averill (Raytheon ITSS/JPL) |
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Tropical Cyclone Monty
| Title |
Tropical Cyclone Monty |
| Description |
The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) acquired these natural color images and cloud top height measurements for Monty before and after the storm made landfall over the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, on February 29 and March 2, 2004 (shown as the left and right-hand image sets, respectively). On February 29, Monty was upgraded to category 4 cyclone status. After traveling inland about 300 kilometers to the south, the cyclonic circulation had decayed considerably, although category 3 force winds were reported on the ground. Some parts of the drought-affected Pilbara region received more than 300 millimeters of rainfall, and serious and extensive flooding has occurred. The natural color images cover much of the same area, although the right-hand panels are offset slightly to the east. Automated stereoscopic processing of data from multiple MISR cameras was utilized to produce the cloud-top height fields. The distinctive spatial patterns of the clouds provide the necessary contrast to enable automated feature matching between images acquired at different view angles. The height retrievals are at this stage uncorrected for the effects of the high winds associated with cyclone rotation. Areas where heights could not be retrieved are shown in dark gray. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbits 22335 and 22364. The panels cover an area of about 380 kilometers x 985 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 105 to 111 within World Reference System-2 paths 115 and 113. 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. Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL MISR Team [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ], caption courtesy Clare Averill, Raytheon/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. |
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Artist's Concept of Terra Sa
…
| Title |
Artist's Concept of Terra Satellite with MISR Onboard |
| Description |
No instrument like MISR has flown in space before. Viewing the sunlit Earth simultaneously at nine widely spaced angles, MISR provides ongoing global coverage with high spatial detail. Its imagery is carefully calibrated to provide accurate measures of the brightness, contrast, and color of reflected sunlight. MISR provides new types of information for scientists studying Earth's climate, such as the partitioning of energy and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere, and the regional and global impacts of different types of atmospheric particles and clouds on climate. The change in reflection at different view angles affords the means to distinguish different types of atmospheric particles (aerosols), cloud forms, and land surface covers. Combined with stereoscopic techniques, this enables construction of 3-D models and estimation of the total amount of sunlight reflected by Earth's diverse environments. |
| Date |
06.03.2003 |
|
Nearside of Earth's Moon as
…
| Title |
Nearside of Earth's Moon as Seen by the Clementine Spacecraft |
| Description |
About 50,000 Clementine images were processed to produce the four orthographic views of the Moon. Images PIA00302, PIA00303, PIA00304, and PIA00305 show albedo variations (normalized brightness or reflectivity) of the surface at a wavelength of 750 nm (just longward of visible red). The image projection is centered at 0 degree latitude and 0 degree longitude. The lunar nearside is a contrast between dark and light albedo surfaces that has been fancied as the "Man in the Moon". Lunar terrain types are still designated by their 17th century name maria (dark albedo features also known as basins) and terra (brighter albedo features also known as uplands or highlands). The maria constitutes about 16 percent and the terra 84 percent of the lunar surface. The nearside is composed of about 30 percent maria. Extensive bright ray systems surround craters Copernicus (upper left center) and Tycho (near bottom). Studies have shown that two major processes, impact and basaltic volcanism have shaped the major physical features of the lunar surface. |
| Date |
11.30.1994 |
|
Spring Flooding on the Missi
…
| Title |
Spring Flooding on the Mississippi |
| Description |
The mighty Mississippi River, from its source at Lake Itasca, Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, is approximately 3780 kilometers long and has flooded many times during its history. In April 2001, residents of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois once again battled near-record water levels. These Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) images, acquired one month apart, illustrate the effects of snowmelt and heavy rainfall on areas traversed by the upper Mississippi River. Each image in this pair covers an identical 195-kilometer x 339-kilometer area. The one on the left was acquired March 26, 2001 (Terra orbit 6762), and the one on the right is from April 27 (Terra orbit 7228). Both are false-color composites, displaying data from the near-infrared band of the instrument's nadir (vertical-viewing) camera as red, the green band of the nadir camera as green, and the red band of the 26-degree forward camera as blue. Data from the forward-viewing camera is included to enhance the reflectivity of water. The near-infrared data provide a good indicator of the abundance of vegetation since plants are highly reflective in this spectral region. The redder color of the right-hand image is due to increased vegetation cover brought about by wet conditions and the onset of spring. Locations of major cities are marked on the left-hand image, major rivers are marked on the right. The portion of the Mississippi River captured in these views extends from just north of La Crosse, Wisconsin to south of Davenport, Iowa. The Wisconsin River joins the Mississippi just below Prairie du Chien. On March 26, snow can clearly be seen over much of the northern portions of the left-hand image. At this point in time, the snow had already begun to melt and the Wapsipinicon River was 52 centimeters above flood stage at De Witt, Iowa (between Clinton and Davenport). By mid-April heavy rainfall swelled the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers. In the early morning of April 25, two days before the right-hand image was acquired, the Mississippi River crested in Davenport, Iowa at 680 centimeters, slightly below the level reached in the record-setting flood of 1993. 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. |
| Date |
07.11.2001 |
|
Venus - Lada Terra Region
| Title |
Venus - Lada Terra Region |
| Description |
This is a Magellan radar image mosaic of part of Venus, centered at 51 degrees south latitude, 21 degrees east longitude. Each pixel, or picture element, represents 225 meters. The scene is approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) east to west by 160 kilometers (99 miles) north to south. Running from west to east across the center of the image is part of a 1,200 kilometer (744 miles) long by 20 kilometer (12 mile) wide lava channel in the Lada Terra region of Venus. Numerous streamlined structures within the channel attest to the very high temperature, very fluid lavas (resulting in both thermal and mechanical erosion) responsible for carving the channel. |
| Date |
04.12.1991 |
|
Syrtis Major and Arabia Terr
…
| title |
Syrtis Major and Arabia Terra |
| Description |
The Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) has, in fact, three cameras. The narrow angle system obtains monochrome (black-and-white) super-high resolution views of the red planet, while the wide angle system obtains regional and global views in both the red and blue portions of the visible spectrum (to make a color image, the red and blue are averaged to obtain the green channel). The picture shown here is a composite of 9 color strips taken by the MOC on 9 successive orbits from pole-to-pole over the planet during the calibration phase of the mission in March 1999. The large, circular bright region that dominates the scene is Arabia Terra. Syrtis Major is the dark region toward the lower right. The north polar cap is visible at the top, and the bright feature at the lower right is the Hellas Basin. The color in this picture is computer-enhanced and is not shown as it would actually appear to the human eye. Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
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Nanedi Vallis
| title |
Nanedi Vallis |
| Description |
This picture of a canyon on the Martian surface was obtained a few minutes after 10 PM PST, January 8, 1998 by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), during the 87th orbit around Mars of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. It shows the canyon of Nanedi Vallis, one of the Martian valley systems cutting through cratered plains in the Xanthe Terra region of Mars. The picture covers an area 9.8 km by 18.5 km (6.1 mi by 11.5 mi), and features as small as 12 m (39 ft) can be seen. The canyon is about 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide. Rocky outcrops are found along the upper canyon walls, weathered debris is found on the lower canyon slopes and along the canyon floor. The origin of this canyon is enigmatic: some features, such as terraces within the canyon (as seen near the top of the frame) and the small 200 m (660 ft) wide channel (also seen near the top of the frame) suggest continual fluid flow and downcutting. Other features, such as the lack of a contributing pattern of smaller channels on the surface surrounding the canyon, box-headed tributaries, and the size and tightness of the apparent meanders (as seen, for example, in the Viking image 89A32), suggest formation by collapse. It is likely that both continual flow and collapse have been responsible for the canyon as it now appears. Further observations, especially in areas west of the present image, will be used to help separate the relative effects of these and other potential formation and modification processes. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
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A Myriad of Geologic Process
…
| title |
A Myriad of Geologic Processes in Terra Cimmeria |
| Description |
This scene in a region of Mars named Terra Cimmeria shows a variety of ancient and recent geologic processes. In the upper portion of the image, a twisting ridge of raised ground may outline the location of a subsurface thrust fault. This type of fault results in the compression and crumpling of a planet's surface. This crumpling of the planet's surface has squeezed two originally circular craters on the ridge into oval-shaped craters. Valleys are also present throughout the image, suggesting that water flowed across this area a long time ago. Many valleys and craters in the image are now filled by deposits of dust or debris. This debris mantle is common over the middle latitudes of Mars and is a geologically recent deposit. Image AEB_000002_0050_Red was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on March 25, 2006. The image is centered at 40.64 degrees south latitude, 144.39 degrees east longitude. It is oriented such that north is 7 degrees to the left of up. The range to the target was 2,038 kilometers (1,266 miles). At this distance the image scale is 2.04 meters (6.69 feet) per pixel, so objects as small as 6.1 meters (20 feet) are resolved. In total this image is 12.34 kilometers (7.67 miles) or 6,045 pixels wide and 34.68 kilometers (21.55 miles) or 17,003 pixels long. The image was taken at a local Mars time of 07:28 and the scene is illuminated from the upper right with a solar incidence angle of 82.0 degrees, thus the sun was about 8.0 degrees above the horizon. At an Ls of 30 degrees (with Ls an indicator of Mars' position in its orbit around the sun), the season on Mars is southern autumn. Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and additional information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mro [ http://www.nasa.gov/mro ] or http://HiRISE.lpl.arizona.edu [ http://HiRISE.lpl.arizona.edu ]. For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov [ http://www.nasa.gov ]. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona |
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Mars Ice Age, Simulated
| title |
Mars Ice Age, Simulated |
| Description |
Infrared imaging from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft shows signs of layering exposed at the surface in a region of Mars called Terra Meridiani. The brightness levels show daytime surface temperatures, which range from about minus 20 degrees to zero degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees to 32 degrees Fahrenheit). Many of the temperature variations are due to slope effects, with sun-facing slopes warmer than shaded slopes. However, several rock layers can be seen to have distinctly different temperatures, indicating that physical properties vary from layer to layer. These differences suggest that the environment on this part of Mars varied through time as these layers were formed. The image is a mosaic combining four exposures taken by the thermal emission imaging system aboard Odyssey during the first two months of the Odyssey mapping mission, which began in February 2002. The area shown is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) across, at approximately 358 degrees east (2 degrees west) longitude and 3 degrees north latitude. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The thermal emission imaging system was provided by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University |
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Mars Surface Layers in Infra
…
| title |
Mars Surface Layers in Infrared |
| Description |
Infrared imaging from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft shows signs of layering exposed at the surface in a region of Mars called Terra Meridiani. The brightness levels show daytime surface temperatures, which range from about minus 20 degrees to zero degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees to 32 degrees Fahrenheit). Many of the temperature variations are due to slope effects, with sun-facing slopes warmer than shaded slopes. However, several rock layers can be seen to have distinctly different temperatures, indicating that physical properties vary from layer to layer. These differences suggest that the environment on this part of Mars varied through time as these layers were formed. The image is a mosaic combining four exposures taken by the thermal emission imaging system aboard Odyssey during the first two months of the Odyssey mapping mission, which began in February 2002. The area shown is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) across, at approximately 358 degrees east (2 degrees west) longitude and 3 degrees north latitude. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The thermal emission imaging system was provided by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University |
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ASTER Andes
PIA02654
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Andes |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
In this image of the Andes along the Chile-Bolivia border, the visible and infrared data have been computer enhanced to exaggerate the color differences of the different materials. The scene is dominated by the Pampa Luxsar lava complex, occupying the upper right two-thirds of the scene. Lava flows are distributed around remnants of large dissected cones, the largest of which is Cerro Luxsar. On the middle left edge of the image are the Olca and Parumastrato volcanoes, which appear in blue due to a lack of vegetation (colored red in this composite). This image covers an area 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide and 60 kilometers (37 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. It was acquired on April 7, 2000. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
|
ASTER Images San Francisco B
…
PIA02606
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Images San Francisco Bay Area |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the San Francisco Bay region was acquired on March 3, 2000 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters about 50 to 300 feet ), ASTER will image Earth for the next 6 years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. Image: This image covers an area 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide and 75 kilometers (47 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. The combination of bands portrays vegetation in red, and urban areas in gray. Sediment in the Suisun Bay, San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean shows up as lighter shades of blue. Along the west coast of the San Francisco Peninsula, strong surf can be seen as a white fringe along the shoreline. A powerful rip tide is visible extending westward from Daly City into the Pacific Ocean. In the lower right corner, the wetlands of the South San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge appear as large dark blue and brown polygons. The high spatial resolution of ASTER allows fine detail to be observed in the scene. The main bridges of the area (San Mateo, San Francisco-Oakland Bay, Golden Gate, Richmond-San Rafael, Benicia-Martinez, and Carquinez) are easily picked out, connecting the different communities in the Bay area. Shadows of the towers along the Bay Bridge can be seen over the adjacent bay water. With enlargement the entire road network can be easily mapped, individual buildings are visible, including the shadows of the high-rises in downtown San Francisco. Inset: This enlargement of the San Francisco Airport highlights the high spatial resolution of ASTER. With further enlargement and careful examination, airplanes can be seen at the terminals. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example, applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Images Tokyo
PIA02607
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Images Tokyo |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the city of Tokyo was acquired on March 22, 2000 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER will image the Earth for the next 6 years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. This false color infrared image covers an area 60 km wide and 75 km long in three bands of the short wavelength infrared region, with a spatial resolution of 15 m. It shows part of the Tokyo metropolitan area extending south to Yokohama, included are the Ginza District, Haneda airport and the Imperial Palace. To the west, Tokyo is hemmed in by mountains, covered with forests (displayed in red), on the southeast, Tokyo Bay is one of the world's great harbors. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Images San Francisco B
…
PIA02605
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Images San Francisco Bay Area |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
These images of the San Francisco Bay region were acquired on March 3, 2000 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite. Each covers an area 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide and 75 kilometers (47 miles) long. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER will image the Earth for the next 6 years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. Upper Left: The color infrared composite uses bands in the visible and reflected infrared. Vegetation is red, urban areas are gray, sediment in the bays shows up as lighter shades of blue. Thanks to the 15 meter (50-foot) spatial resolution, shadows of the towers along the Bay Bridge can be seen. Upper right: A composite of bands in the short wave infrared displays differences in soils and rocks in the mountainous areas. Even though these regions appear entirely vegetated in the visible, enough surface shows through openings in the vegetation to allow the ground to be imaged. Lower left: This composite of multispectral thermal bands shows differences in urban materials in varying colors. Separation of materials is due to differences in thermal emission properties, analogous to colors in the visible. Lower right: This is a color coded temperature image of water temperature, derived from the thermal bands. Warm waters are in white and yellow, colder waters are blue. Suisun Bay in the upper right is fed directly from the cold Sacramento River. As the water flows through San Pablo and San Francisco Bays on the way to the Pacific, the waters warm up. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands, evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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Saharan Dust Cloud Sails Tow
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PIA03539
Sol (our sun)
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroR
…
| Title |
Saharan Dust Cloud Sails Toward U.S. |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
A huge dust cloud blown westward from the Algerian desert is now wafting over the southeastern United States. The cloud, about the size of the entire continent, was expected to produce dramatic sunsets and possibly a light coating of red-brown dust on vehicles from Florida to Texas. This image, captured by JPL's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) aboard the NASA Earth Observing System's Terra Satellite on July 20, 2005, shows the dust cloud just off the west coast of Africa near Mauritania and Senegal. The image covers about 1,800 kilometers (1,200 miles) north-south, and 400 kilometers (260 miles) east-west. MISR, which views Earth at nine different angles in four wavelengths, can derive the amount, size and shape of airborne particles. This means it can distinguish desert dust, by far the most common non-spherical atmospheric aerosol, from pollution and forest fire particles, which are typically spherical. This image was taken by MISR's 26 degree forward-viewing camera on Terra Orbit 29724, Path 208, Blocks 69-81. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] observes the daylit Earth continuously from pole to pole, and the entire globe about once per week. 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. |
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ASTER Suez Canal
PIA02661
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Suez Canal |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
One of the most important waterways in the world, the Suez Canal runs north to south across the Isthmus of Suez in northeastern Egypt. This image of the canal covers an area 36 kilometers (22 miles) wide and 60 kilometers (47 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. It shows the northern part of the canal, with the Mediterranean Sea just visible in the upper right corner. The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez, an arm of the Red Sea. The artificial canal provides an important shortcut for ships operating between both European and American ports and ports located in southern Asia, eastern Africa, and Oceania. With a length of about 195 kilometers (121 miles) and a minimum channel width of 60 meters (197 feet), the Suez Canal is able to accommodate ships as large as 150,000 tons fully loaded. Because no locks interrupt traffic on this sea level waterway, the transit time only averages about 15 hours. ASTER acquired this scene on May 19, 2000. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal, change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Washington, D.C.
PIA02655
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Washington, D.C. |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The White House, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Washington Monument with its shadow are all visible in this image of Washington, D.C. With its 15-meter spatial resolution, ASTER can see individual buildings. Taken on June 1, 2000, this image covers an area 14 kilometers (8.5 miles) wide and 13.7 kilometers (8.2 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. The combination of visible and near infrared bands displays vegetation in red and water in dark grays. The Potomac River flows from the middle left to the bottom center. The large red area west of the river is Arlington National Cemetery. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Waves
PIA02662
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Waves |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The pattern on the right half of this image of the Bay of Bengal is the result of two opposing wave trains colliding. This ASTER sub-scene, acquired on March 29, 2000, covers an area 18 kilometers (13 miles) wide and 15 kilometers (9 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. The visible and near-infrared bands highlight surface waves due to specular reflection of sunlight off of the wave faces. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Images Mt. Usu Volcano
PIA02608
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Images Mt. Usu Volcano |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
On April 3, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra Satellite captured this image of the erupting Mt. Usu volcano in Hokkaido, Japan. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER will image the Earth for the next 6 years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. This false color infrared image of Mt Usu volcano is dominated by Lake Toya, an ancient volcanic caldera. On the south shore is the active Usu volcano. On Friday, March 31, more than 11,000 people were evacuated by helicopter, truck and boat from the foot of Usu, that began erupting from the northwest flank, shooting debris and plumes of smoke streaked with blue lightning thousands of feet in the air. Although no lava gushed from the mountain, rocks and ash continued to fall after the eruption. The region was shaken by thousands of tremors before the eruption. People said they could taste grit from the ash that was spewed as high as 2,700 meters (8,850 ft) into the sky and fell to coat surrounding towns with ash. "Mount Usu has had seven significant eruptions that we know of, and at no time has it ended quickly with only a small scale eruption," said Yoshio Katsui, a professor at Hokkaido University. This was the seventh major eruption of Mount Usu in the past 300 years. Fifty people died when the volcano erupted in 1822, its worst known eruption. In the image, most of the land is covered by snow. Vegetation, appearing red in the false color composite, can be seen in the agricultural fields, and forests in the mountains. Mt. Usu is crossed by three dark streaks. These are the paths of ash deposits that rained out from eruption plumes two days earlier. The prevailing wind was from the northwest, carrying the ash away from the main city of Date. Ash deposited can be traced on the image as far away as 10 kilometers (16 miles) from the volcano. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in, numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Paris
PIA02660
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Paris |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Eiffel Tower and its shadow can be seen next to the Seine in the left middle of this ASTER image of Paris. Based on the length of the shadow and the solar elevation angle of 59 degrees, we can calculate its height as 324 meters (1,054 feet), compared to its actual height of 303 meters (985 feet). Acquired on July 23, 2000, this image covers an area 23 kilometers (15 miles) wide and 20 kilometers (13 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. Known as the City of Light, Paris has been extolled for centuries as one of the great cities of the world. Its location on the Seine River, at a strategic crossroads of land and river routes, has been the key to its expansion since the Parisii tribe first settled here in the 3rd century B.C. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties;, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER-SRTM Perspective of Mo
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PIA02771
Sol (our sun)
ASTER, C-Band Interferometri
…
| Title |
ASTER-SRTM Perspective of Mount Oyama Volcano, Miyake-Jima Island, Japan |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Mount Oyama is a 820-meter-high (2,700 feet) volcano on the island of Miyake-Jima, Japan. In late June 2000, a series of earthquakes alerted scientists to possible volcanic activity. On June 27, authorities evacuated 2,600 people, and on July 8 the volcano began erupting and erupted five times over that week. The dark gray blanket covering green vegetation in the image is the ash deposited by prevailing northeasterly winds between July 8 and 17. This island is about 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Tokyo and is part of the Izu chain of volcanic islands that runs south from the main Japanese island of Honshu. Miyake-Jima is home to 3,800 people. The previous major eruptions of Mount Oyama occurred in 1983 and 1962, when lava flows destroyed hundreds of houses. An earlier eruption in 1940 killed 11 people. This image is a perspective view created by combining image data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) aboard NASA's Terra satellite with an elevation model from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Vertical relief is exaggerated, and the image includes cosmetic adjustments to clouds and image color to enhance clarity of terrain features. The ASTER instrument is a cooperative project between NASA, JPL, and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on February 11,2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect three-dimensional measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter-long (200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense(DoD), and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise,Washington, DC. Size: Island is approximately 8 kilometers (5 miles) in diameter Location: 34.1 deg. North lat., 139.5 deg. East lon. Orientation: View toward the west-southwest. Image Data: ASTER visible and near infrared Date Acquired: February 20, 2000 (SRTM), July 17, 2000 (ASTER) Image: NASA/JPL/NIMA/MITI |
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ASTER Gibraltar
PIA02657
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Gibraltar |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Strait of Gibraltar separates Spain from Morocco. This image, acquired on July 5, 2000, covers an area 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide and 59 kilometers (37 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. The promontory on the eastern side of the conspicuous Spanish port is the Rock of Gibraltar. Once one of the two classical Pillars of Hercules, the Rock was crowned with silver columns by Phoenician mariners to mark the limits of safe navigation for the ancient Mediterranean peoples. The rocky promontory still commands the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. The rocky limestone and shale ridge rises abruptly from the sea, to a maximum elevation of 426 meters (1,398 feet). A British colony, Gibraltar occupies a narrow strip of land at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula. It is separated from the Spanish mainland by a neutral zone contained on a narrow, sandy isthmus. Because of its strategic location and formidable topography, Gibraltar serves mainly as a British fortress. Most of its sparse land is taken up by air and naval installations, and the civilian population is small. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists, in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Mexicali
PIA02659
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Mexicali |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Dramatic differences in land use patterns are highlighted in this image of the U.S.-Mexico border. Lush, regularly gridded agricultural fields on the U.S. side contrast with the more barren fields of Mexico This June 12, 2000, sub-scene combines visible and near infrared bands, displaying vegetation in red. The town of Mexicali-Calexico spans the border in the middle of the image, El Centro, California, is in the upper left. Watered by canals fed from the Colorado River, California's Imperial Valley is one of the country's major fruit and vegetable producers. This image covers an area 24 kilometers (15 miles) wide and 30 kilometers (19 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and, geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Images the Island of H
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PIA02604
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Images the Island of Hawaii |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
These images of the Island of Hawaii were acquired on March 19, 2000 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER will image Earth for the next 6 years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. Data are shown from the short wavelength and thermal infrared spectral regions, illustrating how different and complementary information is contained in different parts of the spectrum. Left image: This false-color image covers an area 60 kilometers (37 miles) wide and 120 kilometers (75 miles) long in three bands of the short wavelength infrared region. While, much of the island was covered in clouds, the dominant central Mauna Loa volcano, rising to an altitude of 4115 meters (13,500 feet), is cloud-free. Lava flows can be seen radiating from the central crater in green and black tones. As they reach lower elevations, the flows become covered with vegetation, and their image color changes to yellow and orange. Mauna Kea volcano to the north of Mauna Loa has a thin cloud-cover, producing a bluish tone on the image. The ocean in the lower right appears brown due to the color processing. Right image: This image is a false-color composite of three thermal infrared bands. The brightness of the colors is proportional to the temperature, and the hues display differences in rock composition. Clouds are black, because they are the coldest objects in the scene. The ocean and thick vegetation appear dark green because they are colder than bare rock surfaces, and have no thermal spectral features. Lava flows are shades of magenta, green, pink and yellow, reflecting chemical changes due to weathering and relative age differences. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications, are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Dunes
PIA02656
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Dunes |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of Saudi Arabia shows a great sea of linear dunes in part of the Rub' al Khali, or the Empty Quarter. Acquired on June 25, 2000, the image covers an area 37 kilometers (23 miles) wide and 28 kilometers (17 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. The dunes are yellow due to the presence of iron oxide minerals. The inter-dune area is made up of clays and silt and appears blue due to its high reflectance in band 1. The Rub' al Khali is the world's largest continuous sand desert. It covers about 650,000 square kilometers (250,966 square miles) and lies mainly in southern Saudi Arabia, though it does extend into the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. One of the world's driest areas, it is uninhabited except for the Bedouin nomads who cross it. The first European to travel through the desert was Bertram Thomas in 1930. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER View of Sharm El Sheik
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PIA02667
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER View of Sharm El Sheik, Egypt |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Red Sea golf resort in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, where President Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, stands out against the desert landscape in this image acquired on August 25, 2000. This image of the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula shows an area about 30 by 40 kilometers (19 by 25 miles) in the visible and near infrared wavelength region. Vegetation appears in red. The blue areas in the water at the top and bottom of the image are coral reefs. The airport is visible just to the north of the golf resort. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is the U.S. Science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands Evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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ASTER Tibet
PIA02658
Sol (our sun)
ASTER
| Title |
ASTER Tibet |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Kunlun fault is one of the gigantic strike-slip faults that bound the north side of Tibet. Left-lateral motion along the 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) length of the Kunlun has occurred uniformly for the last 40,000 years at a rate of 1.1 centimeter per year, creating a cumulative offset of more than 400 meters (1300 feet). In this image, two splays of the fault are clearly seen crossing from east to west. The northern fault juxtaposes sedimentary rocks of the mountains against alluvial fans. Its trace is also marked by lines of vegetation, which appear red in the image. The southern, younger fault cuts through the alluvium. A dark linear area in the center of the image is wet ground where groundwater has pounded against the fault. Measurements from the image of displacements of young streams that cross the fault show 15 to 75 meters (16 to 82 yards) of left-lateral offset. This image of Tibet covers an area 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide and 15 kilometers (10 miles) long in three bands of the reflected visible and infrared wavelength region. ASTER acquired the scene on July 20, 2000. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Dr. Anne Kahle at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the U.S. science team leader, Moshe Pniel of JPL is the project manager. ASTER is the only high-resolution imaging sensor on Terra. The primary goal of the ASTER mission is to obtain high-resolution image data in 14 channels over the entire land surface, as well as black and white stereo images. With revisit time of between 4 and 16 days, ASTER will provide the capability for repeat coverage of changing areas on Earth's surface. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER will provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical, information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Examples of applications include monitoring glacial advances and retreats, potentially active volcanoes, thermal pollution, and coral reef degradation, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, evaluating wetlands, mapping surface temperature of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. |
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Tsunami Inundation, North of
…
PIA06671
Sol (our sun)
ASTER, SIR-C/X-SAR
| Title |
Tsunami Inundation, North of Phuket, Thailand ASTER Images and SRTM Elevation Model |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 The Indian Ocean coastline north of Phuket, Thailand is a major tourist destination that was in the path of the tsunami produced by a giant offshore earthquake on December 26, 2004. This disaster resulted in a heavy loss of life. These simulated natural color ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) images show a 27 kilometer (17-mile) long stretch of coast 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Phuket airport in the Khao Lak area on December 31 (middle) and also two years earlier (left). The changes along the coast are obvious (changing from green to grey) where the vegetation was stripped away by the tsunami. The image on the right is a copy of the later ASTER scene but it includes highlighting in red for areas that have elevations within 10 meters (33 feet) of sea level. This elevation information was supplied by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The red areas appear to include most of the tsunami inundated areas. The geographic correspondence of the imaged damage and the highlighted elevation range is quite good in the middle and upper parts of the scene and is consistent with an early field report of about 10 meters of inundation. In the south, the elevation range corresponds to a much wider area than the actual damage, but this is to be expected for areas increasingly far from the coast. Offshore bathymetry (depth variations), coastal landforms, distance from the coast, and additional factors other than elevation range control the damage extent. But elevation measurements along the coast, as provided by SRTM, give a general indication of areas at risk, as now confirmed by ASTER. ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet with its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet). These data provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Elevation data used in this image were acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour,, launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect three-dimensional measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter-long (200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Size: 9.75 x 27.6 kilometers (6.0 x 17.1 miles), Location: 8.6 degrees North latitude, 98.3 degrees East longitude Orientation: Top is 8.25 degrees east of North Image Data: ASTER Bands 1, 2, 3 mixed for simulated true color. Date Acquired: November 15, 2002 and December 31, 2004 (ASTER), February 2000 (SRTM) |
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Tsunami Inundation, North of
…
PIA06671
Sol (our sun)
ASTER, SIR-C/X-SAR
| Title |
Tsunami Inundation, North of Phuket, Thailand ASTER Images and SRTM Elevation Model |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 The Indian Ocean coastline north of Phuket, Thailand is a major tourist destination that was in the path of the tsunami produced by a giant offshore earthquake on December 26, 2004. This disaster resulted in a heavy loss of life. These simulated natural color ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) images show a 27 kilometer (17-mile) long stretch of coast 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Phuket airport in the Khao Lak area on December 31 (middle) and also two years earlier (left). The changes along the coast are obvious (changing from green to grey) where the vegetation was stripped away by the tsunami. The image on the right is a copy of the later ASTER scene but it includes highlighting in red for areas that have elevations within 10 meters (33 feet) of sea level. This elevation information was supplied by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The red areas appear to include most of the tsunami inundated areas. The geographic correspondence of the imaged damage and the highlighted elevation range is quite good in the middle and upper parts of the scene and is consistent with an early field report of about 10 meters of inundation. In the south, the elevation range corresponds to a much wider area than the actual damage, but this is to be expected for areas increasingly far from the coast. Offshore bathymetry (depth variations), coastal landforms, distance from the coast, and additional factors other than elevation range control the damage extent. But elevation measurements along the coast, as provided by SRTM, give a general indication of areas at risk, as now confirmed by ASTER. ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet with its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet). These data provide scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping, and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats, monitoring potentially active volcanoes, identifying crop stress, determining cloud morphology and physical properties, wetlands evaluation, thermal pollution monitoring, coral reef degradation, surface temperature mapping of soils and geology, and measuring surface heat balance. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Elevation data used in this image were acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour,, launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect three-dimensional measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter-long (200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Size: 9.75 x 27.6 kilometers (6.0 x 17.1 miles), Location: 8.6 degrees North latitude, 98.3 degrees East longitude Orientation: Top is 8.25 degrees east of North Image Data: ASTER Bands 1, 2, 3 mixed for simulated true color. Date Acquired: November 15, 2002 and December 31, 2004 (ASTER), February 2000 (SRTM) |
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Stereo Pair with ASTER Image
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PIA03363
Sol (our sun)
C-Band Interferometric Radar
| Title |
Stereo Pair with ASTER Image, Iturralde Structure, Bolivia |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
An 8-kilometer (5-mile) wide crater of possible impact origin is shown in this stereoscopic view of an isolated part of the Bolivian Amazon. The view is derived from an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) satellite image and a Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation model. The circular feature covering much of the image, known as the Iturralde Structure, is possibly the Earth's most recent "big" impact event recording collision with a meteor or comet that might have occurred between 11,000 and 30,000 years ago. Although the structure was identified on satellite photographs in the mid-1980s, its location is so remote that it has only been visited by scientific investigators twice, most recently by a team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in September 2002. Lying in an area of very low relief, the landform is a quasi-circular closed depression only about 20 meters (66 feet) in depth, with sharply defined sub-angular "rim" materials. It resembles a "cookie cutter" in that its appearance "cuts" the heavily vegetated soft-sediments and pampas of this part of Bolivia. The SRTM data have provided investigators with the first topographic map of the site and will allow studies of its three-dimensional structure crucial to determining whether it actually is of impact origin. This stereoscopic image was generated by first draping the ASTER satellite image over the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model. Two differing perspectives were then calculated, one for each eye. They can be seen in 3-D by viewing the left image with the right eye and the right image with the left eye (cross-eyed viewing) or by downloading and printing the image pair and viewing them with a stereoscope. When stereoscopically merged, the result is a vertically exaggerated view of Earth's surface in its full three dimensions. Thick vegetation in part defines the surface that the SRTM radar sees as it maps the terrain. Much of the local "topography" in this area is a measure of tree height (typically up to 13 meters, or 40 feet). This effect is easily seen here, where the ground surface relief is very low. Interpretative separation of the ground surface and vegetative features can typically be made by recognition of their characteristic patterns. However, by integrating the ASTER data into the visualization, spectral colors help the recognition of terrain features (green vegetation and blue water). The ASTER instrument is a cooperative project between NASA, JPL, and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and it flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb. 11, 2000. The mission used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on Endeavour in 1994. The Shuttle Radar Topography, Mission was designed to collect 3-D measurements of Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense, and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C. Size: 16.3 kilometers (10.1 miles) North-South by 14.5 kilometers (9.0 miles) East-West Location: 12.6 degrees South latitude, 67.7 degrees West longitude Orientation: North at top, Latitude-Longitude projection Image: ASTER band 1,2,3 combinations as red, green, blue. Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arcsecond (about 30 meters or 98 feet), ASTER 15 meters (about 49 feet) Date Acquired: February 2000 (SRTM), June 29, 2001 (ASTER) |
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Nyiragongo volcano, Congo, P
…
PIA03338
Sol (our sun)
C-Band Interferometric Radar
…
| Title |
Nyiragongo volcano, Congo, Perspective View with Lava SRTM / ASTER / Landsat |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Nyiragongo volcano in the Congo erupted on January 17, 2002, and subsequently sent streams of lava into the city of Goma on the north shore of Lake Kivu. More than 100 people were killed, more than 12,000 homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the broader community of nearly half a million people. This computer-generated visualization combines a Landsat satellite image and an elevation model from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) to provide a view of both the volcano and the city of Goma, looking slightly east of north. Additionally, image data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite were used to supply a partial map of the recent lava flows (red), including a complete mapping of their intrusion into Goma as of January 28, 2002. Lava is also apparent within the volcanic crater and at a few other locations. Thick (but broken) cloud cover during the ASTER image acquisition prevented a complete mapping of the lava distribution, but future image acquisitions should complete the mapping. Nyiragongo is the steep volcano on the right, Lake Kivu is in the foreground, and the city of Goma has a light pink speckled appearance along the shoreline. Nyiragongo peaks at about 3,470 meters (11,380 feet) elevation and reaches almost exactly 2,000 meters (6,560 feet)above Lake Kivu. The shorter but broader Nyamuragira volcano appears in the left background. Topographic expression has been exaggerated vertically by a factor of 1.5 for this visualization. Goma, Lake Kivu, Nyiragongo, Nyamuragira and other nearby volcanoes sit within the East African Rift Valley, a zone where tectonic processes are cracking, stretching, and lowering the Earth's crust. Volcanic activity is common here, and older but geologically recent lava flows (magenta in this depiction) are particularly apparent on the flanks of the Nyamuragira volcano. The Landsat image used here was acquired on December 11, 2001, about a month before the eruption, and shows an unusually cloud-free view of this tropical terrain. Minor clouds and their shadows were digitally removed to clarify the view, topographic shading derived from the SRTM elevation model was added to the Landsat image, and a false sky was added. Landsat has been providing visible and infrared views of the Earth since 1972. SRTM elevation data matches the 30-meter (98-foot) resolution of most Landsat images and substantially helps in analyzing the large and growing Landsat image archive. This Landsat 7 Thematic Mapper image was provided to the SRTM and ASTER projects by the United States Geological Survey, Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center,Sioux Falls, S.D. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) will image Earth, for several years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. ASTER is providing scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission(SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C. Size: View width 21 kilometers (13 miles), View distance 42 kilometers(26 miles) Location: 1.5 degrees South latitude, 29.3 degrees East longitude Orientation: View east-northeast, 5 degrees below horizontal Image Data: Landsat Bands 3, 2, 1 as red, green, blue, respectively. ASTER Band 12(thermal) shown as red overlay. Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arcsecond (30 meters or 98 feet), Landsat 30 meters (98 feet). ASTER (thermal) 90 meters (295 feet). Date Acquired: February 2000 (SRTM), December 11, 2001 (Landsat), January 28, 2002(ASTER) |
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Nyiragongo Volcano, Congo, M
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PIA03339
Sol (our sun)
C-Band Interferometric Radar
…
| Title |
Nyiragongo Volcano, Congo, Map View with Lava, Landsat / ASTER / SRTM |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Nyiragongo volcano in the Congo erupted on January 17, 2002, and subsequently sent streams of lava into the city of Goma on the north shore of Lake Kivu. More than 100 people were killed, more than 12,000 homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the broader community of nearly half a million people. This Landsat satellite image shows the volcano (right of center), the city of Goma, and surrounding terrain. Image data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite were used to supply a partial map of the recent lava flows (red overlay), including a complete mapping of their intrusion into Goma as of January 28, 2002. Lava is also apparent within the volcanic crater and at a few other locations. Thick (but broken) cloud cover during the ASTER image acquisition prevented a complete mapping of the lava distribution, but future image acquisitions should complete the mapping. Goma has a light pink speckled appearance along the shore of Lake Kivu. The city airport parallels, and is just right (east) of, the larger lava flow. Nyiragongo peaks at about 3,470 meters (11,380 feet) elevation and reaches almost exactly 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above Lake Kivu. The shorter but much broader Nyamuragira volcano appears in the upper left. Goma, Lake Kivu, Nyiragongo, Nyamuragira and other nearby volcanoes sit within the East African Rift Valley, a zone where tectonic processes are cracking, stretching, and lowering the Earth's crust. Volcanic activity is common here, and older but geologically recent lava flows (magenta in this depiction) are particularly apparent on the flanks of the Nyamuragira volcano. The Landsat image used here was acquired on December 11, 2001, about a month before the eruption, and shows an unusually cloud-free view of this tropical terrain. Minor clouds and their shadows were digitally removed to clarify the view and topographic shading derived from the SRTM elevation model was added to the Landsat image. Landsat has been providing visible and infrared views of the Earth since 1972. SRTM elevation data matches the 30-meter (98-foot) resolution of most Landsat images and substantially helps in analyzing the large and growing Landsat image archive. This Landsat 7 Thematic Mapper image was provided to the SRTM and ASTER projects by the United States Geological Survey, Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center, Sioux Falls, S.D. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) will image Earth for several years to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy,Trade and Industry. A joint, U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. ASTER is providing scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring dynamic conditions and temporal change. Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter(approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise,Washington, D.C. Size: 21 by 42 kilometers (13 by 26 miles) Location: 1.5 degrees South latitude, 29.3 degrees East longitude Orientation: East-northeast at top Image Data: Landsat Bands 3, 2, 1 as red, green, blue, respectively. ASTER Band 12 (thermal) shown as red overlay. Original Data Resolution: Landsat 30 meters (98 feet). ASTER (thermal) 90 meters (295 feet), SRTM 1 arcsecond (30 meters or 98 feet). Date Acquired: December 11, 2001 (Landsat), January 28, 2002 (ASTER), February 2000 (SRTM). |
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