These images of Canada's Québec province were acquired by
the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer on March 4, 2001.
The region's forests are a mixture of coniferous and hardwood
trees, and "sugar-shack" festivities are held at this time
of year to celebrate the beginning of maple syrup production.
The large river visible in the images is the northeast-flowing
St. Lawrence. The city of Montréal is located near the lower
left corner, and Québec City, at the upper right, is near the
mouth of the partially ice-covered St. Lawrence Seaway.
Both spectral and angular information are retrieved for every
scene observed by MISR. The left-hand image was acquired by
the instrument's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera, and is a
false-color spectral composite from the near-infrared, red, and
blue bands. The right-hand image is a false-color angular composite
using red band data from the 60-degree backward-viewing, nadir, and
60-degree forward-viewing cameras. In each case, the individual
channels of data are displayed as red, green, and blue, respectively.
Much of the ground remains covered or partially covered with snow.
Vegetation appears red in the left-hand image because of its high
near-infrared brightness. In the multi-angle composite, vegetated
areas appear in shades of green because they are brighter at nadir,
possibly as a result of an underlying blanket of snow which is more
visible from this direction. Enhanced forward scatter from the
smooth water surface results in bluer hues, whereas urban areas
look somewhat orange, possibly due to the effect of vertical
structures which preferentially backscatter sunlight.
The data were acquired during Terra orbit 6441, and cover an area
measuring 275 kilometers x 310 kilometers.
MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC.
The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology.
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
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