The Sinai Peninsula, located between Africa and Asia, is a result of
those two continents pulling apart from each other. Earth's crust is
cracking, stretching, and lowering along the two northern branches of
the Red Sea, namely the Gulf of Suez, seen here on the west (left), and
the Gulf of Aqaba, seen to the east (right). This color-coded shaded
relief image shows the triangular nature of the peninsula, with the coast
of the Mediterranean Sea forming the northern side of the triangle. The
Suez Canal can be seen as the narrow vertical blue line in the upper left
connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
The peninsula is divided into three distinct parts; the northern
region consisting chiefly of sandstone, plains and hills, the central
area dominated by the Tih Plateau, and the mountainous southern region
where towering peaks abound. Much of the Sinai is deeply dissected by
river valleys, or wadis, that eroded during an earlier geologic period
and break the surface of the plateau into a series of detached massifs
with a few scattered oases.
Two visualization methods were combined to produce the image: shading
and color coding of topographic height. The shade image was derived by
computing topographic slope in the northwest-southeast direction, so that
northwest slopes appear bright and southeast slopes appear dark. Color
coding is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lower
elevations, rising through yellow and tan, to white at the highest
elevations.
Elevation data used in this image were acquired by the Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb.
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 3-D measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D
data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed
additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and
navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA,
the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the U.S. Department
of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth
Science Enterprise,Washington, D.C.
Location: 30 degrees north latitude, 34 degrees east longitude
Orientation: North toward the top, Mercator projection
Size: 289 by 445 kilometers (180 by 277 miles)
Image Data: shaded and colored SRTM elevation model
Date Acquired: February 2000