Earth from Space - Image Description

NM23-761-679 Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico, USA Winter-Spring 1997
The forested slopes of the Sacramento Mountains (large dark feature near center of the image) contrast against an otherwise arid environment (lighter colored terrain). The highly reflective White Sands National Monument, located in the Tularosa Valley is visible west of the Sacramento Mountains. The elongated, ribbon-like, dark feature northwest of the Sacramento Mountains is a basaltic lava flow that originated from a vent at the northern end of the valley. Two other mountain ranges, Capitan and Guadalupe, can be identified north, and southeast, respectively, of the Sacramento Mountains. The mottled looking landscape (north-south swath) towards the eastern edge of the image is the irrigated agriculture of the Pecos River Valley, where artesian wells are used to provide water. The main channel of the intermittently flowing Rio Hondo and many of its tributaries can be traced from the northeast slopes of the Sacramento Mountains to the point where the Rio Hondo merges with the Pecos River at the town of Roswell (barely discernible).

This service is provided by the International Space Station program and the JSC Earth Science & Remote Sensing Unit, ARES Division, Exploration Integration Science Directorate.