Sevastopol, Ukraine

The port city of Sevastopol is located in southernmost Ukraine on the Crimean Peninsula. The city is an important naval base due to the numerous inlets and bays along the coastline. During the Cold War, the city was the base of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, but now it services vessels of both the Ukraine and Russia. The main economy of the city is based on trade and shipbuilding, but Sevastopol is also a popular tourist and resort destination for visitors from the Commonwealth of Independent Countries (formed from former Soviet Republics).

This astronaut photograph highlights the jagged coastline of the southern Crimean Peninsula and the various docking areas of Sevastopol. The urban area is light gray, and it is bounded to the north and west by the Black Sea, to the south by vegetated (light green) and fallow (tan) agricultural fields, and to the east by the city of Inkerman and vegetated uplands (deep green). The city of Balaklava, to the south, houses another relic of the Cold War—an underground Soviet submarine base that is now open to the public as a monument. The Chernaya River issues into the Black Sea near Inkerman, flowing into the Sevastopol Inlet to the west.

Astronaut photograph ISS020-E-28072 was acquired on August 5, 2009, with a Nikon D3 digital camera fitted with a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 20 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by William L. Stefanov, NASA-JSC.