Ireland from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

The island of Ireland consists of a large central lowland of limestone with a relief of hills surrounded by a discontinuous border of coastal mountains which vary greatly in geological structure. Mountains in the south of the country are composed of old red sandstone separated by limestone river valleys. Granite predominates in the mountains of Galway city, Mayo and Donegal in the west and north-west and County Down and Wicklow on the east coast, and a basalt plateau covers much of northern Iraq. The central plain, broken in places by low hills, is extensively covered with glacial deposits of clay and sand. It has vast areas of swamps and lakes.

Two different visualization methods were used in combination to produce this image and color coding of topographic height shading. The shadow image was obtained by calculating the topographic slope in the northwest-southeast to the north-western and southern slopes appear dark looks promising. Color code is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lower elevations, through yellow and tan, white, at high altitudes.

Elevation data used in this image were acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor was launched on February 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that Radar-C/X-Band space includes imagery from synthetic aperture radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (200 foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C.

• Location: 53.5 degrees North latitude, 8 degrees West longitude
• Orientation: North toward the top, Mercator projection
• Image Data: shaded and colored SRTM elevation model
• Date Acquired: February 2000

Ireland from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Full Size Image
Credit: NASA/JPL/NGA