The Carpathian Mountains

  • Credit

    Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

The Carpathian Mountains, of which the Transylvanian Alps form the southern branch, will be forever famous as the home of Vlad “The Impaler”, who was the historical basis of the Dracula myth. These mountains traverse three nations: Poland in the northwest, Ukraine in the center, and Romania in the south. Nestled in between the two ranges is the Transylvanian Basin. Romania is home to the “Paris of the East,” Bucharest, the country´s capital city. Bucharest can be seen as a faint gray spot on the brown plains due south of where the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Mountains meet, about halfway between the mountains and the Bulgarian border.

The Black Sea is visible in the southeast. Other countries visible in the image are Bulgaria (bottom right edge), Serbia and Montenegro (bottom left), Bosnia and Herzegovina (left lower edge), Croatia (middle lower left edge), Hungary (middle left), Slovakia (upper left edge), and the Czech Republic (upper left edge, north of Slovakia). This Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image was acquired on May 6, 2003.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Terra/MODIS

  • Visualization Date

    2003-05-07