Orange County, California
Photo ID: P-46722
April 25, 1996
This spaceborne radar image of Orange County, Calif., shows the
massive urbanization of this rapidly growing region located just
south of Los Angeles. Orange County, sandwiched between rugged
mountains and the Pacific Ocean, includes the communities of
Anaheim, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. Anaheim Stadium can be
seen in the upper center of the image, as a small white ring to
the right of a major freeway intersection. The large dark blue
rectangular area in the upper left is the Seal Beach Naval
Weapons Station and adjacent wildlife refuge. Runways of the El
Toro Marine Air Station appear as a black "X" near the center of
the image. The large purple area to the left of the the Air
Station and extending to the coast is the scar left by the Laguna
wildfire of October 1993. The sparse vegetation left in the
wake of the fire provides a weak source of radar echoes, making
the burn areas distinctively dark in the image. Another large
burn area, from the Ortega fire of 1993, is seen in the mountains
in the lower right of the image. The image was acquired by the
Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-
C/X-SAR) onboard the space shuttle Endeavour on October 3, 1994.
The image is centered at 33.7 degrees north latitude and 117.7
degrees west longitude. North is toward the upper right. The
image shows an area 66.2 kilometers by 44.2 kilometers (41.0
miles by 27.4 miles). The colors are assigned to different
frequencies and polarizations of the radar as follows: red is L-
band, horizontally transmitted, horizontally received; green is
L-band, horizontally transmitted, vertically received; blue is C-
band, horizontally transmitted, vertically received. SIR-C/X-SAR,
a joint mission of the German, Italian and United States space
agencies, is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program.
![[ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA]](OCIMAGE.GIF)