This radar image shows land use patterns in and around the city of Florence, Italy, shown here in the center of the image. Florence is situated on a plain in the Chianti Hill region of Central Italy. The Arno River flows through town and is visible as the dark line running from the upper right to the bottom center of the image. The city is home to some of the world's most famous art museums. The bridges seen crossing the Arno, shown as faint red lines in the upper right portion of the image, were all sacked during World War II with the exception of the Ponte Vecchio, which remains as Florence's only covered bridge. The large, black V-shaped feature near the center of the image is the Florence Railroad Station. This image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on April 14, 1994. SIR-C/X-SAR, a joint mission of the German, Italian, and United States space agencies, is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. This image is centered at 43.7 degrees north latitude and 11.15 degrees east longitude with North toward the upper left of the image. The area shown measures 20 kilometers by 17 kilometers (12.4 miles by 10.6 miles). The colors in the image are assigned to different frequencies and polarizations of the radar as follows: red is L-band horizontally transmitted, horizontally received; green is L-band horizontally transmitted, vertically received; blue is C-band horizontally transmitted, vertically received.
P-46049 August 31, 1995
For a full-resolution (12-megabyte) copy of this image, press
here
For a browse resolution (135 K) copy of this image, press
here
Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. The radars illuminate Earth with microwaves allowing detailed observations at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR uses three microwave wavelengths: L-band (24 cm), C-band (6 cm) and X-band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the international scientific community to better understand the global environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented by aircraft and ground studies, will give scientists clearer insights into those environmental changes which are caused by nature and those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. X-SAR was developed by the Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space agency, Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), with the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft und Raumfahrt e.v.(DLR), the major partner in science, operations, and data processing of X-SAR.