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Seen from Space 2006

Fall in Sydney, a Harbour City in the Southern Hemisphere

 
Fig.1 Sydney
AVNIR-2 on ALOS ("Daichi") captured this very clear image of Sydney, an Australian harbour city famous for its beauty, on 3 May 2006. This is fall in the Southern Hemisphere and in the week of Japanese holidays called "the Golden week," and many Japanese tourists probably visited this city.

Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and is also the biggest city in Australia, with a population of about 4.3 million. Sydney has evolved on both sides of a very irregular bay line as you can see in this image. This bay, officially named Port Jackson but commonly known as the Sydney Harbour, is the largest natural port in the world, having a length of 19 km and an area of 55 km2. You can see the Sydney Airport at the center bottom of this image. The airport runs out into Botany Bay, and it takes about 15 minutes by train from the airport to downtown Sydney.

The Summer Olympic Games were held in Sydney in 2000. Most of the games were held at several places visible in this image and particularly at the center of the Olympics at the Sydney Olympic Park in the suburbs of Sydney. The Olympic Stadium in this park, where the opening and closing ceremony, track and field events, etc. were held, was the goal point of the marathon races. Ms. Naoko Takahashi, who won the gold medal of the women's marathon and the first gold in the history of the Japanese track and field competition in the Olympics, started from the North Sydney, crossed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, passed south of downtown Sydney, turned and headed west to the Olympic Park.

Fig.2 Enlarged Image of Inner Sydney
Sydney (kmz, 1.92MB, Low Resolution) as seen on Google Earth.
Figure 2 depicts the inner Sydney area enlarged from Fig.1; west is upwards. This image was taken at a 34-degree angled view westwards from the nadir of ALOS using the pointing capability of AVNIR-2. You can see the skyscrapers in the downtown slanting upwards in the three-dimensional view.

At the North end of the skyscrapers and on the waterfront, you can find the Circular Quay, the terminal of ferries, and the Sydney Opera House on a point, the emblem of Sydney appearing in bright white color. At the Sydney Exhibition Centre, which is the large white square building in the Darling Harbour area, Ms. Ryoko Tamura achieved her fervent wish for a gold medal in women's Judo.

There are many white wakes in the bay, which perhaps are mostly made from ferries. The town of Sydney has evolved on both sides of the bay, and the ferries as well as the Sydney Harbour Bridge provide a key public transportation infrastructure.

At the bottom of this image is Bondi Beach, where surfers enjoy their sport throughout the year. "Bondi" is an Aboriginal word meaning "waves breaking over the rocks," and you can easily find big white waves approaching. The Beach Volleyball games were held at the beach in the Olympics.



Explanation of the Images:
(Figs. 1 and 2)
Satellite: Advanced Land-Observing Satellite (ALOS) (Daichi)
Sensor: Advanced Visible Near-Infrared Radiometer type-2 (AVNIR-2)
Date: 2340 (UT) on May 3, 2006
Ground resolution 10 m
Map Projection: Universal Transversal Mercator (UTM)
AVNIR-2 has four observation bands with a pointing function by which it can shift its direction of observation to be perpendicular to ALOS's moving direction. The composite images were produced by assigning blue to Band 1 (420 to 500nm), green to Band 2 (520 to 600nm), and red to Band 3 (610 to 690nm). The resulting image has natural coloring as if seen by the naked eye. Thus, ground objects are distinguishable by the following colors.

Dark green: Forests
Light green or light brown: Grasslands, or farmlands
Bluish gray: City areas or roads
Red, blue, white: Roofs of buildings
Dark blue: Water surfaces (rivers, bays, harbours, or sea)

Related Sites:
ALOS Research and Application Page
Central Tokyo Dotted with Green Areas and Skyscraper-Clusters
Land, Seen from Space
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