Return to Earth From Space Home
Earth from Space logo Image Information Earth from Space logo

Display a Screen Layout for Printing

IMAGE: gray corner       IMAGE: gray corner
  Image: Geographic Location Direction Photo #: ISS025-E-8532 Date: Oct. 2010
Geographic Region: USA-TEXAS
Feature: HOUSTON, ASTRODOME, RELIANT STADIUM

Ordering information for space photography
 
IMAGE: gray corner     IMAGE: gray corner

Image: gray corner     Image: gray corner
  View Low-Resolution Image  
  Reliant Park Area, Houston, Texas

This astronaut photograph highlights the Reliant Park area of Houston's "inner loop," the part of the city located within Interstate Highway 610. Reliant Park includes two large sports complexes: Reliant Stadium and Reliant Astrodome. Built in 1965, the Astrodome was the world's first fully enclosed, domed sports stadium. The structure is no longer used for major sporting events, and proposals have been made for renovating and repurposing it. Reliant Stadium was built in 2002 to host the Houston Texans, a National Football League team. It was the first American football stadium built with a retractable roof (shown here in its retracted position).

Houston is home to the NASA Johnson Space Center and is notable among major U.S. metropolitan areas for its lack of formal zoning ordinances. (Other forms of regulation play a similar role here.) This leads to highly mixed land use within the city. Around Reliant Park you can find large asphalt parking lots, vacant lots with a mixture of grass and exposed topsoil, and both single- and multi-family residential areas. A forested area (dark green, lower left) is located less than two kilometers from the parking lots.

This subset of a handheld digital camera image has a spatial resolution of 2 to 3 meters per pixel (or picture element), making it one of the highest spatial resolution images ever obtained from the International Space Station (ISS). Such high resolution was made possible by using lens "doublers" to increase the optical magnification of camera lenses. Active ISS motion compensation is also important; the astronaut must pan the camera by hand at just the right rate, keeping the object at the same point in the viewfinder. The technique involves bracing yourself against the space station bulkhead to prevent movement related to weightlessness. Traditional short lens photography is easier because it does not require motion compensation.
 
Image: gray corner     Image: gray corner

Images: All Available Images Low-Resolution 308k
Mission: ISS025  
Roll - Frame: E - 8532
Geographical Name: USA-TEXAS  
Features: HOUSTON, ASTRODOME, RELIANT STADIUM  
Center Lat x Lon: 29.7N x 95.4W
Film Exposure:   N=Normal exposure, U=Under exposed, O=Over exposed, F=out of Focus
Percentage of Cloud Cover-CLDP: 10
 
Camera: N4
 
Camera Tilt: 27   LO=Low Oblique, HO=High Oblique, NV=Near Vertical
Camera Focal Length: 1000  
 
Nadir to Photo Center Direction: W   The direction from the nadir to the center point, N=North, S=South, E=East, W=West
Stereo?:   Y=Yes there is an adjacent picture of the same area, N=No there isn't
Orbit Number: 85  
 
Date: 20101005   YYYYMMDD
Time: 171100   GMT HHMMSS
Nadir Lat: 29.9N  
Latitude of suborbital point of spacecraft
Nadir Lon: 93.8W  
Longitude of suborbital point of spacecraft
Sun Azimuth: 158   Clockwise angle in degrees from north to the sun measured at the nadir point
Space Craft Altitude: 188   nautical miles
Sun Elevation: 53   Angle in degrees between the horizon and the sun, measured at the nadir point
Land Views:  
Water Views:  
Atmosphere Views:  
Man Made Views: HIGHWAY  
City Views: HOUSTON  
Photo is not associated with any sequences


NASA
Home Page
JSC
Home Page
JSC Digital
Image Collection
Earth Science &
Remote Sensing

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