Satellite Eye for Galathea 3

Narsarsuaq viewed from Landsat. The yellow arrow indicates the airport.

The image is part of the Satellite Eye for Galathea 3 project from which you can access images for education covering the harbours that the Galathea 3 expedition is visiting.

What can you see ?

Narsarsuaq is the international airport in southern Greenland. It was established by the Americans during World War 2, and since 1959 is has been operated as a civilian airport. Only a few hundred people live near the airport.

Part of the people live from sheep farming, and the wide grasslands are a good reserve in the summer. Erik the Red settled down in the area in year 985, and exactly this area explains why he chose to name the new land Greenland.

It is a color combination of the bands 5, 4 og 3 placed in, respectively, the red, the green and the blue image view. It is easy to see the locations where the vegetation is growing (the green areas), where there is bare soil or cliff (brown and reddish color) and ice and snow (different blue colors).

The image provides a good overview of the area including the ice cap, the glaciers, the large valley systems and the fjords.

Technical information:

Landsat ETM scene from 4 August 2000. The Landsat satellite orbits Earth at a height around 700 km. The observations are excellent for providing a view for a large area. The spatial resolution is 30 m.

The image is of the same type as found in Google Earth, but the present image contains more information because we have more spectral bands displayed here.