7.1.98

    I came across this neat little web page which contains a database of images taken from various space shuttle missions. It's called Earth From Space: An Astronaut's View of the Home Planet. I was trying to find some star maps to put on the front page of my site but I came across this instead. I loved the synopsis of Los Angeles -- reminds me of documentaries of the 50s that they'd show on film reels in elementary school. You could always tell who was teacher's pet because they got to run the projector.

    I don't usually do this with images -- resize them with html -- but I didn't want to lose any clarity. They are both large files so I extend my apologies to those on a slow connection. To see a larger image you can right-click (PC) with your mouse or option-click (Mac) and choose view image.

Los Angeles Basin,
California, U.S.A.
May 1991:

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The Los Angeles metropolitan area includes five counties and covers 34 000 square miles (88 060 square kilometers). Nearly 10 million people live and work in this dynamic region. Los Angeles is important economically because of shipping, industrial facilities, distribution centers, and financial institutions.

Not many individual highways are clearly visible in this photograph; however, the alignment of some major thoroughfares can be observed by looking at the clustered light areas. These clustered, highly reflective areas show concentrations of industrial and commercial activities within the urban area.

Several major physical features are seen in this photograph, including the Santa Monica Mountains (northwest), the San Gabriel Mountains (northeast), the Puente Hills (east), and the Santa Ana Mountains (southeast). Along the coast, Palos Verdes is a rolling, hilly promontory in the Pacific Ocean. Even on this scale, there is evidence that a large harbor and port exist in the San Pedro and Long Beach areas southeast of Palos Verdes. The three large lakes east-southeast of the heavily populated area are reservoirs. Also in the photograph is the resort island of Santa Catalina, which is approximately 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of the California coast.

Several major interstate highways can be identified, and many of the large industrial and commercial areas can be identified by their highly reflective signatures. These clustered areas are usually found alongside major ground transportation routes. Downtown Los Angeles (near the center of photograph) can be seen west of Interstate Highway 5, which traverses southeast-northwest.

Since this photograph is made on color infrared film, the reddish signatures represent vegetated areas; usually more intense red is indicative of vibrant vegetation. Not surprisingly, the red areas in this photograph (trees, grasses, and shrubs) are predominantly found on the mountains, hills, and parks that are scattered throughout the region.

The two long, parallel runways of Los Angeles International Airport are visible southwest of the center of the photograph, midway between the Santa Monica Mountains to the north and the Palos Verdes Hills to the south.

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    If that sort of stuff intrigues you then you should check out Microsoft's demo site of their new Terra Server. It demonstrates the ability of this server to hold massive amounts of complicated information, in this case geological land studies and spy satellite pictures from the United States and Russia, and deliver them to the user. It is not a complete global representation (go ahead and try to find Area 51!) but it's pretty cool. Bill Gates really frightens me at times. Thank God it's not real-time.