This image shows the area around the January 26, 2001, earthquake in western India, the deadliest in the country's history with some 20,000 fatalities. The epicenter of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake was just to the left of the center of the image. The Gulf of Kachchh (or Kutch) is the black area running from the lower left corner towards the center of the image. The city of Bhuj is in the yellow-toned area among the brown hills left of the image center and is the historical capital of the Kachchh region. Bhuj and many other towns and cities nearby were almost completely destroyed by the shaking of the earthquake. These hills reach up to 500 meters (1,500 feet) elevation. The city of Ahmedabad, capital of Gujarat state, is the radar-bright area next to the right side of the image. Several buildings in Ahmedabad were also destroyed by the earthquake. The dark blue areas around the center of the image and extending to the left side are low-lying salt flats called the Rann of Kachchh with the Little Rann just to the right of the image center. The bumpy area north of the Rann (green and yellow colors) is a large area of sand dunes in Pakistan. A branch of the Indus River used to flow through the area on the left side of this image, but it was diverted by a previous large earthquake that struck this area in 1819.
| The annotated version of the image includes a "beachball" that shows the location and slip direction of the January 26, 2001, earthquake from the Harvard Quick CMT catalog: http://www.seismology.harvard.edu/CMTsearch.html. |  |
This image combines two types of data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The image brightness corresponds to the strength of the radar signal reflected from the ground, while colors show the elevation as measured by SRTM. Colors range from blue at the lowest elevations to brown and white at the highest elevations. This image is a mosaic of four SRTM swaths.
This image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect three-dimensional measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter-long (200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington DC.
Size: 450 by 300 kilometers (280 by 190 miles)
Location: 23.5 deg. North lat., 70.5 deg. East lon.
Orientation: North up
Original Data Resolution: SRTM 30 meters (99 feet)
Date Acquired: four days in February, 2000
