Birdseye View of the Red, White and Blue

Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was
signed 225 years ago on July 4, 1776, lies in the center of a
new image from a NASA Earth-observing satellite. This true-
color view of the northeastern United States includes a
fitting display of the reddish colors of soils, grayish-whites
of urban areas and clouds, and blue hues of water.

The image was taken by the spaceborne Multi-angle Imaging
SpectroRadiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. The
image is available at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/usa .

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, built and
managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,
is one of several Earth-observing experiments aboard the Terra
satellite, launched in December 1999. The instrument acquires
images of Earth at nine angles simultaneously, using nine
separate cameras pointed forward, downward and backward along
its flight path. More information about the experiment is
available at http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov .