Astronaut Photography of Earth - Display Record
ISS020-E-34693
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| File Name | File Size (bytes) | Width | Height | Annotated | Cropped | Purpose | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View | ISS020-E-34693.JPG | 82305 | 640 | 437 | No | No | ||
| View | ISS020-E-34693.JPG | 264024 | 540 | 357 | Yes | Yes | NASA's Earth Observatory web site | |
| View | ISS020-E-34693.JPG | 727842 | 1000 | 662 | No | Yes | NASA's Earth Observatory web site | |
| View | ISS020-E-34693.JPG | 1153822 | 4288 | 2929 | No | No |
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Electronic Image Data
Camera Files >> No sound file available.Identification
Mission: ISS020 Roll: E Frame: 34693 Mission ID on the Film or image: ISS020Country or Geographic Name: BRAZIL
Features: LAKE EREPECU, RIO TROMBETAS, SUNGLINT
Center Point Latitude: -1.4 Center Point Longitude: -56.6 (Negative numbers indicate south for latitude and west for longitude)
Stereo: (Yes indicates there is an adjacent picture of the same area)
ONC Map ID: JNC Map ID:
Camera
Camera Tilt: 22Camera Focal Length: 180mm
Camera: N2: Nikon D2Xs
Film: 4288E : 4288 x 2848 pixel CMOS sensor, RGBG imager color filter.
Quality
Film Exposure:Percentage of Cloud Cover: 10 (0-10)
Nadir
Date: 20090825 (YYYYMMDD)GMT Time: 142253 (HHMMSS)Nadir Point Latitude: -1.6, Longitude: -57.9 (Negative numbers indicate south for latitude and west for longitude)
Nadir to Photo Center Direction: East
Sun Azimuth: 61 (Clockwise angle in degrees from north to the sun measured at the nadir point)
Spacecraft Altitude: 191 nautical miles (354 km)
Sun Elevation Angle: 64 (Angle in degrees between the horizon and the sun, measured at the nadir point)
Orbit Number: 1688
Captions
Lago Erepecu and Rio Trombetas, BrazilThe 38-kilometer-long (about 24 miles) Lago do Erepecu (Lake Erepecu) in Brazil runs parallel to the lower Rio Trombetas (Trombetas River), which snakes along the lower half of this astronaut photograph. Waterbodies in the Amazon rainforest are often so dark they can be difficult to distinguish. In this image, however, the lake and river stand out from the uniform green of the forest in great detail as a result of sunglint on the water surface. Sunglint is the mirror-like reflection of sunlight off of a surface directly back towards the viewer, in this case an astronaut onboard the International Space Station.
Forest soil is red, as shown by airfield clearings near Porto Trombetas (image far lower right), a river port on the south side of the Trombetas River. The Trombetas flows into the Amazon River from the north about 800 kilometers (497 miles) from the Amazon mouth. Despite being so far from the sea, seagoing ore ships export most of Brazil’s bauxite from Porto Trombetas. Bauxite is the raw material used to produce aluminum. (The Trombetas bauxite mine is beyond the lower edge of the image).
Central Amazonia has many lakes like Erepecu—relatively straight, large waterbodies located just off the main axis of the large rivers. These lakes began as rivers that carved deeply into the landscape during periods of low sea level accompanying ice ages in the past 1.7 million years. When sea level was low, the gradient from a river’s headwaters to its end at the ocean was steeper, and rivers flowed faster and carved deeper beds. During intervening warm periods, rising sea level reduced the gradient at the river’s end so much that it faced an impossible task—flowing uphill to the ocean.
The only way a river could have continued to flow to the sea is if it was carrying enough sediment to fill the deep river valleys carved during low sea level, creating a new “ground level” for the river to flow across. Many larger rivers like the Trombetas and the Amazon itself carried enough loose sediment to fill their deeply carved valleys, and then to trace sinuous courses (lower part of image) across the new beds. But smaller rivers that carried less sediment could not fill in their deep valleys; instead, the valleys acted like troughs. The river water poured in, but couldn’t flow out because of rising sea level, so lakes like Erepecu formed.
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