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. 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 (upper left) shoreline of the harbor. Toward the southwest (lower left) the fault crosses through the city, then forms linear canyons in the hills before continuing offshore. Toward the northeast (upper right) the fault forms the sharp mountain front along the northern edge of the heavily populated Hutt Valley.This anaglyph was generated by first draping a Landsat Thematic Mapper image over a topographic map from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, then using the topographic data to create two differing perspectives, one for each eye. When viewed through special glasses, the result is a vertically exaggerated view of the Earth's surface in its full three dimensions. Anaglyph glasses cover the left eye with a red filter and cover the right eye with a blue filter.Landsat satellites have provided visible light and infrared images of the Earth continuously since 1972.