Earth from Space - Image Description

STS066-089-019 Lake Moore Area, Western Australia, Australia November 1994
Although the bottom half of this easterly looking, low oblique image presents a non-descriptive landscape, the numerous, large dry lake-beds (lighter features) in the upper half help to locate and identify specific features. For example, the multi-fingered (5 "arms") dry lake in the upper left corner of the image is Lake Barlee. The other sizable dry lake, Lake Moore, is visible in the upper right quadrant. The highly reflective (whitish-looking, elongated feature near right middle) surface, Mongers Lake, suggests that there may be some sun reflection off of standing water in this normally dry lake at the time that this photograph was acquired. Western Australia gets drier and more barren to the north and east. The dramatic color change shows the abrupt change as a result of man's impact on the land use pattern. The darker landscape is a more primitive, naturally occurring environment and the lighter landscape shows man's ability to change the landscape. In some cases the straight lines show where fences are located.

This service is provided by the International Space Station program and the JSC Earth Science & Remote Sensing Unit, ARES Division, Exploration Integration Science Directorate.