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Urban Growth in Cairo 1965-98
Published September 16, 2001
Astronaut photographs from the Gemini era and from the space shuttle reveal tremendous growth.
Related images:
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African Dust Blows over the Caribbean
Published September 9, 2001
Shuttle astronauts frequently track Saharan dust storms as they blow from north Africa across the Atlantic Ocean. Dust palls blowing from Africa take about a week to cross the Atlantic. Recently, researchers have linked Saharan dust to coral disease, allergic reactions in humans, and red tides. The top photograph, a classic image showing African dust over the Caribbean, was taken at a time when few scientists had considered the possibility. The image was taken by Space Shuttle astronauts on July 11, 1994. This photograph looks southwest over the northern edge of a large trans-Atlantic dust plume that blew off the Sahara desert in Africa. In this view, Caicos Island in the Bahamas and the mountainous spines of Haiti are partly obscured by the dust. Closer to the foreground, (about 26 degrees north latitude), the skies are clear.
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California Wildfires as Seen From the Space Shuttle
Published September 2, 2001
An astronaut on the Space Shuttle photographed several wildfires burning in California in August 2001.
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Elephant damage to vegetation in Botswana
Published August 26, 2001
At the junction of the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers, Botswana, increasing elephant populations are having large impacts on local vegetation. Scientists working in the region used spectral analysis of an astronaut photograph digitized from film to identify areas where woodland vegetation had been heavily damaged by the elephants. The technique used the analysis of texture of the red band (or channel) in the image.
Klamath Basin, California-Oregon
Published August 19, 2001
The Klamath Basin, on the California-Oregon border, had been in the news because of water shortages due to the drought in the United States’ Pacific Northwest. Diverse interest groups have come into conflict over the limited availability of Klamath Project water. In order to protect endangered Sucker Fish and threatened Coho Salmon in Upper Klamath Lake, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation cut off the flow of irrigation water to farmers in the project in April 2001.
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Manhattan
Published August 12, 2001
It was a fine spring day on April 28, 2001, in New York City when the Expedition 2 crew of Space Station Alpha acquired this digital photograph. This ESC image was taken of Manhattan using an 800 mm lens (see inset) from an orbit altitude of 383 km. This particular lens can achieve spatial resolutions less than 6 meters.
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Ash Plume Streams from Mt. Etna, Sicily
Published August 4, 2001
The record of historical volcanism of Mt. Etna is one of the longest in the world, dating back to 1500 BC.
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Greenwich, Where East Meets West
Published July 29, 2001
Greenwich is situated on the south shore of a sharp bend in the River Thames, just southeast of the City of London and is part of Greater London. Here is located the world famous Royal Observatory where the Prime Meridian, dividing East and West Longitude, was defined by international agreement in 1884.
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Baku, Azerbaijan
Published July 22, 2001
Baku is Azerbaijan’s major city, and the oil capital of the Caspian region. This detailed view taken by the Expedition 2 crew on the International Space Station shows details of the city, including the extensive port facilities, and part of the large web of offshore oil platforms in the Caspian Sea.
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Mayon Volcano, Southeast Luzon, Philippines
Published July 15, 2001
Mayon volcano is the most active volcano in the Philippines, located just north of the coastal town of Legaspi in southern Luzon about 325 km southeast of Manila. Mayon is a near-perfect cone; its steep, forested slopes look rather like a bull’s eye when viewed from above.
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Watery Gem of Northern Italy, the City of Venice
Published July 8, 2001
The compact Italian city of Venice with its renowned canals is situated on a small, fish-shaped island in the Laguna Veneta at the northwest corner of the Adriatic Sea. In this photo taken from the International Space Station by the Expedition 1 Crew on February 21, 2001, one can see part of the causeway connecting the city to the mainland. The sinuous Canal Grande bisecting the city is easily visible in this scene as is the larger Canal Giudecca to the west, which leads to the port facilities on the northwestern end of the island. For centuries, the low-lying city has successfully coped with the three-foot tidal range experienced at this end of the Adriatic Sea, and the series of barrier islands has offered some protection from storm waves. However, a combination of both regional land subsidence and recent slight rises in sea level pose a significant threat this historic city and its priceless art treasures.
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Atolls in the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia
Published July 1, 2001
These two images of the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia, illustrate diversity in the morphology of atolls, one of the major types of coral reef formations. A typical atoll structure is a lagoon surrounded by a closed rim of cays and shallow spillways that control the exchange of water between the ocean and the lagoon. However, like human beings, this general scheme may vary according to the history of each individual atoll, resulting in a high diversity of morphology, especially for small atolls. The two neighboring atolls shown here have some unique features. What was a lagoon on Nukutavake (19°17′ S 138°48′ W, 6.2 km²) is now dry and completely covered by vegetation. Pinaki (3.54 km²) has a drying shallow lagoon still connected to the ocean via a single narrow spillway. The variation of morphology implies that each atoll may have a different equilibrium between ocean, lagoon, and land ecosystems.
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