![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20080924080007im_/http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov//19787/Andaman_TMO_2005003_tn.jpg)
Images & Animations
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Credit
NASA images courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Both the 2005 and 2003 images are available in additional resolutions.</p>
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake - the largest in 40 years - struck offshore of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on December 26, 2004. These images show the damage caused by the resulting tsunami to the shores of northwestern Sumatra.
- Large Images: <li>January 3, 2005 (406 kb) <li>January 23, 2003 (246 kb)
This Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image pair shows a portion of the Andaman Islands on January 3, 2005, left, and January 23, 2003, right. In the most recent image, the beaches along the west side of the islands have been stripped bare, leaving a strip of bright tan land along the coast. The change is most notable on North Sentinel Island, home of the Sentinelese aboriginals, and on Interview Island, where the formerly green coastline has been replaced with an abnormally bright ring of bare sand. North Sentinel is fringed by a coral reef, which appears turquiose in the pre-tsunami image, but which may have been smothered in sand and sediment in the post-tsunami image. The large image reveals additional damage along all the islands of the Andaman chain.
Metadata
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Sensor
Terra/MODIS -
Start Date
2005-01-03 -
Event Start Date
2004-12-26 -
NH Image ID
12651 -
NH Event ID
10569 -
NH Posting Date
2005-01-03