14 DAY TRIAL // The image above shows the mountain cluster that is being used to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, held in Sochi, Russia. This resort is located close to the Black Sea, and features double black diamond-rated ski and snowboarding slopes. However, on the ground, the slopes do not appear as steep as in this photo taken from space.
The dataset was acquired on January 4, 2014 by the NASA Terra satellite, using its Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument. The photo was then processed to bring out topographic details, by increasing its size 1.5 times above the original value.
The Winter Olympics began yesterday, February 7, and are scheduled to run for 17 days. The resort site housing all Game participants appears in grey in this image, while snow is white and vegetation is depicted in red. The photo contains both visible and near-infrared data, all stitched to a digital elevation map produced previously by ASTER.
This workhorse instrument has been surveying Earth since launching into space on Dec. 18, 1999. Terra is the flagship mission in NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), which also features the TRMM, Aqua, Landsat 8 and Aquarius missions, among many others.