ISS010 Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Photographic Highlights

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View larger image for ISS010-E-13539
ISS010-E-13539
Issaouane Erg, Algeria: The Issaouane Erg (sand sea) is located in eastern Algeria between the Tinrhert Plateau to the north and the Fadnoun Plateau to the south. Ergs are vast areas of moving sand with little to no vegetation cover. Considered to be part of the Sahara Desert, the Issaouane Erg covers an area of approximately 38,000 km2. These complex dunes form the active southwestern border of the sand sea.

The most common landforms in the image are star dunes and barchan (or crescent) dunes. Small linear dunes appear at top left. Star dunes are formed when sand is transported from variable wind directions, whereas barchan dunes form in a single dominant wind regime. The superimposition of two dune types suggests that wind regimes have changed through time. The active nature of this portion of the Erg is well illustrated by this image—smaller dunes form and migrate along the flanks of the larger dunes and sand ridges. Occasional precipitation fills basins formed by the dunes; as the water evaporates, salt deposits are left behind which appear as bluish-white areas.

View larger image for ISS010-E-13393
ISS010-E-13393
Mt. Damavand, Iran: Located approximately 50 kilometers northeast of Tehran, Mt. Damavand is an impressive stratovolcano that reaches 5,670 meters (18,598 feet) in elevation. Part of the Alborz Mountain Range that borders the Caspian Sea to the north, Damavand is a young volcano that has formed mostly during the Holocene Epoch (over approximately the last 10,000 years). The western flank of the volcano includes solidified lava flows with flow levees—“walls” formed as the side edges of flowing lava cooled rapidly, forming a chute that channeled the hotter, interior lava. Two such flows with well-defined levees are highlighted by snow on the mountainside.

Damavand is the highest peak in Iran and the highest volcano in the Middle East. The mountain and its surrounding areas are popular hiking, climbing, and skiing destinations. While no historic eruptions of the volcano are recorded, hot springs on the flanks of the volcano and fumaroles (steam vents) in the summit crater suggest that a hot or cooling magma body is still present beneath the volcano. This continuing activity, while minor, indicates a dormant rather than extinct volcano.

View larger image for ISS010-E-13807
ISS010-E-13807
Shenyang, China: The city of Shenyang is China’s sixth largest city with a population of over 4 million residents in the urban core. The city is the major industrial, commercial, and cultural center of northeastern China (the region historically known as Manchuria). Its geographic location on the floodplains of the Hun and Liao Rivers ensured an early agrarian economy that was later replaced by industrialization and natural resource extraction. Shenyang was first settled as a Mongol trading center in the 10th century, and served as the capitol of the Manchu government from the 17th through 20th centuries. Currently the city serves as the capitol of Liaoning Province.

Shenyang’s role as a major industrial center is illustrated by this astronaut photograph. Snow cover provides a clear contrast between urbanized (dark grey, center of image) and rural regions (white to light grey). The major portion of the local economy is devoted to industries such as metal smelting, coal mining, and petrochemical processing. Several southeast-trending plumes from industrial facilities are visible in the image. The high density of industrial land use in the Shenyang metropolitan area has lead to significant air, water, and soil pollution in the region. Recently, several initiatives to reduce pollution levels and establish environmentally sound development guidelines have begun with support from local government and the United Nations.

View larger image for ISS010-E-13029
ISS010-E-13029
Coastal Change, Amazon River Mouth: Over a period of approximately four years a major island near the mouth of the Amazon River has been dramatically modified as the arms of the river have shifted. In the image above, an oblique image, captured by an astronaut with a handheld camera in January 2005 (base image), is contrasted with a false-color Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) image from 2000 (inset). In the Landsat inset, green indicates rainforest, pinks and mauves are low-growing, colonizing vegetation on tidally inundated areas, and the Amazon River is blue.

The island is about 5 kilometers long and is located near 0.3° N 50.2° W). Between 2000 and 2005 the channel on the west side of the island has shifted to the northwest by eroding ~200 meters of the mainland shoreline and accreting (depositing) sediment on the west side of the island, broadly maintaining the width of the channel. White lines around the island in the inset image indicate the modern shorelines captured in the astronaut photograph. In the handheld photograph, the island shoreline of 2000 prominently demarcates older vegetated from new, not-yet-vegetated land surfaces (top arrow).

By contrast, the northern channel (to the right of the island) has significantly widened, eroding almost 1 kilometer of the northern end of the island, as well as narrowing a smaller island downstream (lower right). A more important but subtler effect has been the accumulation of sediment on the upstream (left-hand) two-thirds of the island, accompanied by the establishment of permanent vegetation (dark green).

Vegetation appears to anchor small streams in place, but discharge in major arms of the Amazon overcomes the cohesive power of vegetation so that large channels can be comparatively mobile. Other islands in the Amazon mouth are also known to have moved by hundreds of meters per year due to the processes of erosion and deposition.

View larger image for ISS010-E-8224
ISS010-E-8224
Mount Olympus, Greece: Mount Olympus is the highest peak in Greece. The 2,917-meter (9,570-foot) summit is the tallest in a mountain chain that runs north into Bulgaria and south into Turkey, via the Cyclades Islands. In this winter view, Olympus is the only peak with a dusting of snow—perhaps the reason its name in classical Greek means “the luminous one.” In Greek mythology, the peak was inhabited by the Twelve Olympians, the most famous gods of the ancient Greeks. North of Mount Olympus lies Macedonia, the homeland of Alexander the Great. Climbing the famous mountain is a favorite tourist activity today.

The eastern slopes of Olympus and its neighboring peaks drop sheerly into the Thermaikos Gulf, a northern arm of the Aegean Sea. White cirrus clouds partially obscure the shoreline near the city of Thessaloniki at upper right. This major port is spread along the shores of a small and well protected bay. West (left) of the Olympus chain of mountains lies a large plain broken by several west-to-east-trending ridges. In the northern part, a tuquoise-colored lake sits along the Aliakmon River. To the south is the town of Larisa, at the focus point of a series of transport routes.

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ISS010-E-23035
Rollout of Shuttle Discovery, Kennedy Space Center: International Space Station Astronaut Leroy Chiao, like the rest of NASA, tracks key milestones for the Space Shuttle Return-to-Flight operations. A lucky overpass of the Space Station over Florida on April 6, 2005, allowed Leroy and his crew mate Salizhan Sharipov a unique view of the rollout of the Space Shuttle Discovery. At the time of his observations, Discovery was approximately midway between the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and launch pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Shuttle, mated with its solid-fuel booster rockets and orange external fuel tank, is visible on the wide Crawler-Transporter track (marked with white box and shown in an inset image). Moving at a maximum speed of 1 mile per hour (1.6 km/hr), the massive Crawler-Transporter, laden with a launch-configured Shuttle and Mobile Launch Platform, takes approximately 13 hours to move between the VAB and pad 39-B.

Launch of the Discovery will mark NASA’s “Return to Flight” following the loss of the Shuttle Columbia with its crew on February 1, 2003. The primary goal for the upcoming Discovery mission will be to test several vehicle modifications and damage-assessment data sources, tools, and procedures. These modifications include a modified design for the external fuel tank, more cameras focused on the launch and ascent of the Shuttle, and detailed imaging of the Shuttle’s heat-resistant tiles and reinforced carbon-carbon surfaces on the wings and nosecap.

View larger image for ISS010-E-20111
ISS010-E-20111
Lima Metropolitan Area, Peru: Located on the broad alluvial fan of the Rimac River, Lima is the capital of Peru and the only megacity (7.7 million inhabitants in 2002) located on the western coastline of South America. The city was established by Francisco Pizarro in 1535 and became an important colonial port, linking silver mines of the Altiplano of the high Andes Mountains with the burgeoning Spanish empire. During the mid-20th century, significant numbers of people relocated from rural mountain communities into the Lima metropolitan area. Problems now facing the metropolitan region include developing adequate water resources, controlling pollution, and preparing for natural hazards such as earthquakes and landslides.

This astronaut photograph depicts the wealthier San Isidro and Miraflores quarters of Lima. This part of the metropolitan area is characterized by numerous vegetated parks, golf courses (such as the Lima Golf Course—approximately 1 km long), and greenbelts interspersed with residential and commercial areas. The higher proportion of dark asphalt in the street grid of the residential and commercial areas lends a purple coloration to the left portion of the astronaut photograph (downtown Lima is to the north). Regions with fewer built materials and vegetation are light tan. Wave patterns are visible approaching beaches, popular tourist destinations, in the lower half of the image.

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ISS010-E-23748
Spring Thaw, Straits of Mackinac: The Mackinac Bridge spans a stretch of water five miles wide between Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. The strait connects Lakes Michigan (left) and Huron (right). The bridge is a combination of pier-supported spans with a high, central suspension sector that allows passage of lake steamers. The suspension sector is the longest in the Americas (8, 614 feet or 1.6 miles). Prior to construction of the bridge, the only passage across the straits was by ferryboat.

This pair of images shows the Mackinac Straits while they were still frozen (top) and as they began to thaw (below). The March 22 view shows shipping lanes opened by ice breakers. A narrow passage connects the cleared shipping channel to the small town of St. Ignace at the north end of the bridge (Mackinaw City appears at the south end). The April view shows the ice broken into a series of irregular rafts that appear gray against bright water. The whitish appearance of the water is not snow or ice, but instead is sunlight glinting off the water back to camera. The shipping channel is maintained even through remnants of the ice mass, but the ice ridges can be hazardous to shipping until the last of the ice breaks up.

View larger image for ISS010-E-22495
ISS010-E-22495
London, United Kingdom: Numerous well-known landmarks appear in this detailed view of London taken from the International Space Station. To capture the shot, the astronaut had to look back along the Space Station’s ground track, from a position over northern Germany. The most striking visual features are green open spaces such as Regent’s Park, Hyde Park and St. James’s Park east of Buckingham Palace. Many smaller parks indicate why Londoners are proud of being able to walk miles through the city mainly on grass. The River Thames—with its bridges and barges (some of the more than 14,000 craft registered to sail the Thames)—is the axis upon which the city was founded in Roman times.

The relatively small area known as the City of London coincides with the ancient walled Roman city of Londinium on the north bank of the river (the line of the wall is marked closely for almost its entire length by modern streets), and includes St. Paul’s Cathedral near where the Roman temple stood. For scale, the river is 265 meters wide near St. Paul’s. The City is the financial center while Westminster is the center of government, including the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street, where the British Prime Minister lives.

Several large structures visible in this image are railroad stations: three serving areas north of London (Euston, St. Pancras, and King’s Cross), and Waterloo Station serving southern Britain. The London Eye, a famous Ferris wheel 140 meters high, is situated on an oval island in the River Thames, visible just west of Waterloo Station. Many larger buildings can also be identified, partly because they cast shadows— Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tate Modern art museum (a converted power station whose 99-meter chimney was designed to fall just short of the crest of St Paul’s dome).

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ISS010-E-23451
Khartoum, Sudan: Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum, translates as “Elephant’s Trunk.” The name describes the shape of the Nile where the Blue and the White Nile Rivers unite to form the single Nile River that flows northward into Egypt. This image shows the rivers near the end of the dry season.

The White Nile (western branch) runs through Sudan from Uganda. The White Nile originates in equatorial regions, where rainfall occurs throughout the year; as a result, it runs at a nearly constant rate throughout the year. The Blue Nile, nearly dry this time of year, flows out of the Ethiopian highlands, where rainfall is more seasonal. The Blue Nile swells in the late summer and early fall with rains from the summer monsoons. The flow at these times can be so great that the volume is too much for the river's channel, causing the Nile to flow backward at the junction. In recent years, floods in Khartoum have occurred in August with heavy monsoon rainfall.

Khartoum is one of the largest Muslim cities in North Africa, but it has a fairly short history. Founded as a military outpost in 1821, a Sudanese flag has only flown over the city since 1956. Today, Khartoum is home to more than a million people, including many refugees, both from neighboring countries as well as from an ongoing civil war in southern Sudan. The city has a low profile, dominated by sprawling areas of small buildings that are supported by little infrastructure.

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