The southeast part of the island of Hokkaido, Japan, is an area dominated by
volcanoes and volcanic caldera. The active Usu Volcano is at the lower right edge
of the circular Lake Toya-Ko and near the center of the image. The prominent cone
above and to the left of the lake is Yotei Volcano with its summit crater. The
city of Sapporo lies at the base of the mountains at the top of the image and the
town of Yoichi -- the hometown of SRTM astronaut Mamoru Mohri -- is at the upper
left edge. The bay of Uchiura-Wan takes up the lower center of the image. In this
image, color represents elevation, from blue at the lowest elevations to white at
the highest. The radar image has been overlaid to provide more details of the
terrain. Due to a processing problem, an island in the center of this crater lake
is missing and will be properly placed when further SRTM swaths are processed.
The horizontal banding in this image is a processing artifact that will be
removed when the navigation information collected by SRTM is fully calibrated.
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: 100 by 150 kilometers
(62 by 93 miles)
Location: 42.5 deg. North lat., 140.3 deg. East lon.
Orientation: North towards upper left
Image Data: SRTM
Original Data Resolution: SRTM 30 meters (99 feet)
Date Acquired: February 17, 2000
For more information, see the SRTM web site.
Image courtesy NASA/JPL/NIMA