Landsat Thematic Mapper Imagery of San Jose

These scenes shows Landsat Thematic Mapper data of the city of San Jose and of the San Francisco Bay Area. The first image, which is predominately brown in color, is a "natural color" image which uses the Thematic Mapper bands 3, 2, and 1 displayed as red, green, and blue respectively. This yields a color scheme approximately the same as those seen by the human eye. The other two scenes use data from the infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to maximize the range of wavelengths shown. These images use the shortwave infrared (TM band 5), infrared (TM band 4), and visible green (TM band 2) channels. Digital elevation data was used in the two city scenes to create three dimensional terrain, which is vertically exaggerated by a factor of three to show the relief of the land. In the immediate San Jose area, even with this vertical exaggeration, the relief in the terrain is very slight and subtle.

The two runways to the left (west) side of the image are the San Jose International Airport (nearest the center) and Moffett Field, the airstrip serving NASA's Ames Research Center. The salt ponds in the southern portion of the Bay are visible, with different colors resulting from different salinity levels. The strong brown/grey tone of the natural colour image is a result of the data being taken during the early autumn when ground cover is very dry and the land tends to appear somewhat barren. In the TM 542 scenes, barren exposed land appears red to pink, vegetation appears green, water is dark blue, and the light blue along the coastal shore is surf.

Technical notes:
Rendered: January 1999
Data source: Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper; USGS 3-arcsecond DTED
Data date: 27 September 1997
For: The Landsat Project Team and Goddard Public Affairs Office