SPACEPHOTOS

Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, is located on the shores of Port Nicholson, a natural harbor at the south end of North Island. The city was founded in 1840 by British emigrants and now has a regional population of more than 400,000 residents. As seen here, the natural terrain imposes strong control over the urban growth pattern (urban features generally appear gray or white in this view). Rugged hills generally rising to 300 meters (~1,000 feet) help protect the city and harbor from strong winter winds New Zealand is seismically active and faults are readily seen in the topography. The Wellington Fault forms the straight northwestern (left) shoreline of the harbor. Toward the southwest (down) the fault crosses through the city, then forms linear canyons in the hills before continuing offshore at the bottom. Toward the northeast (upper right) the fault forms the sharp mountain front along the northern edge of the heavily populated Hutt Valley.This stereoscopic image pair was generated using topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, combined with an enhanced true color Landsat 7 satellite image. The topography data are used to create two differing perspectives of a single image, one perspective for each eye. In doing so, each point in the image is shifted slightly, depending on its elevation. When stereoscopically merged, the result is a vertically exaggerated view of the Earth's surface in its full three dimensions.Landsat satellites have provided visible light and infrared images of the Earth continuously since 1972.