browse
image of orbit 15805 (700 KB JPEG)
The snowstorm which swept across the eastern United States on December 4
and 5 also brought the season’s first snow to parts of the south and
southern Appalachia. The extent of snow cover over central Kentucky,
eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and Virginia are apparent in
this view from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). This
natural-color image was captured by MISR’s downward-looking (nadir)
camera on December 7, 2002.
The Appalachians are bounded by the Blue Ridge mountain belt along the
east and the Appalachian Plateau along the west. Valleys and ridges
between the higher elevation areas retain the green and reddish-brown
hues of autumn, and many rivers and lakes appear blue and unfrozen. The
highest peak in the eastern United States, Mount Mitchell, is found in
North Carolina’s western tip, near the Great Smoky Mountains (the
dark-colored range at lower right).
The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth
continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees
north and 82 degrees south latitude. The MISR Browse Image Viewer provides access to
low-resolution true-color versions of these images. This data product was generated
from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 15805. The
image covers an area of 347 kilometers x 279 kilometers, and utilizes
data from blocks 60 to 62 within World Reference System-2 path 19.
Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
Text by Clare Averill (Acro Service Corporation/Jet Propulsion Laboratory).