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Lyttleton, Harbour of Christchurch (New Zealand) seen from
Space
Lyttleton is the historical harbour as well as present
harbour of Christchurch. In the image the street pattern is
clearly visible together with many details of the harbour, such
as fuel tanks, the container park, ships and the loading
installations and even the shadow of the cranes. The dark area
to the east is a coal storage waiting for transportation to
Japan. Lyttleton is comfortably connected with Christchurch
through tunnels, one for cars and one for the train, the latter
one is mainly used for the transport of coal from the West Coast.
During the pioneer time of the mid 19th century and until 1976
the arriving and exhausted settlers were forced to surmount with
all their goods the dangerously steep hill behind Lyttleton in
order to reach the town of Christchurch.
Technical information
This image has been acquired specifically for the Satellite
Eye project for the arrival of the Galathea 3 expedition in New
Zealand. On 10th September 2006 the attempt to catch a clear
cloud free view on the harbour was successful. The very small
ESA demonstration satellite PROBA weighting only 94kg was
launched in 2001 was planned to operate only for one year, but
has become a success story lasting for already more than 5 years.
Its Earth imaging payload HRC, a small-scale monochromatic
camera, acquire 25km x 25km square images with a spatial
resolution of five metres. To date, data from HRC and CHRIS, the
other sensor, support the research of about 100 Earth
observation projects from nearly 30 countries worldwide.
Although not very high resolution, the free availability of the
data through such projects makes it a valuable tool for many
applications through mapping and monitoring. |
