glimpses of India - courtesy NASA

The following pictures of India are uploaded here from visible earth. It is my tribute to Mother India and NASA.

This is a radar image of an offshore drilling field about 150 km (93 miles) west of Bombay, India, in the Arabian Sea. The dark streaks are extensive oil slicks surrounding many of the drilling platforms, which appear as bright white spots.

This image, acquired by the high resolution Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) flying aboard the Terra spacecraft, shows an area west of the quake’s epicenter (23.4° N, 70.32°E) and north of the city of Bhuj.

Floods devestated parts of eastern India along the Brahmaputra River in June 2000. In some tributaries of the Brahmaputra, the water reached more than 5 meters (16.5 feet) above flood stage. At least 40 residents died, and the flood waters destroyed a bridge linking the region to the rest of India. High water also threatened endangered Rhinos in Kaziranga National Park. Flooded areas are shown in red in the above image. The map was derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data taken on June 15, 2000.

This radar image of Kolkata (Calcutta), India, illustrates different urban land use patterns. Calcutta, the largest city in India, is located on the banks of the Hugli River, shown as the thick, dark line in the upper portion of the image.

In late December 2000, a cyclone hit Sri Lanka and India. Wtih winds up to 150 km per hour (90 mph), the storm killed eight people in Sri Lanka and forced thousands of people to ecvacuate their homes in India.

MOPITT observed high levels of carbon monoxide (red and yellow pixels) over the Indian sub-continent during March. These values are associated with industrial activity in the region just south of the Himalayan Mountains.

The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centres. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region. Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there. Deserts in Africa, Arabia, Australia, Mongolia, and the United States are poorly lit as well (except along the coast), along with the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, and the great mountains of the Himalaya.

The Brahmaputra turns southward at the border of Bangladesh and is soon joined by the Ganges River, flowing in from image left. The mighty river splits into numerous channels as it runs out toward the Bay of Bengal, giving the region the name "Mouths of the Ganges." Vast amounts of sediment are being emptied into the Bay by the river, and greenish blue swirls could be a mixture of sediment and phytoplankton.

The skies over Northern India are filled with a thick soup of aerosol particles all along the southern edge of the Himalayan Mountains, and streaming southward over Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. Notice that the air over the Tibetan Plateau to the north of the Himalayas is very clear, whereas the view of the land surface south of the mountains is obstructed by the brownish haze.

Extremely high sediment loads are delivered to the Arabian Sea along the coast of Pakistan (upper left) and western India. In the case of the Indus River (far upper left) this sedimentation, containing large quantities of desert sand, combines with wave action to create a large sand-bar like delta. In the arid environment, the delta lacks much vegetation, but contains numerous mangrove-lined channels.