Marmara Denizi, Turkey

Orbit 35489 Frame 2781 2 February 2002 8:44 GMT

To the left: the Marmara Denizi that separates Eastern and Western Turkey. In ancient times this body of water was called by the Greeks "Propontis" or "fore-sea" because of its location in relation to the Black Sea. It joined the Oriental and Occidental worlds.
Across it: plenty of ships in navigation from one bank to the other (click on the boat shapes).
On top: the Black Sea showing interesting features as detected by the SAR instrument.
Facing it, on the western coast: Sile, ("wild flower" in ancient Greek), an important harbour for all the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman civilisations to watch the horizons of the Black Sea and be aware of enemies. Today, long, golden beaches, huge rocks and small islands, together with a magnificent lighthouse, the greatest in Turkey, attract a wide tourism.
Centre image: Izmit, where Hannibal died in 183 BC. Capital of Kocaeli, Izmit is today an important naval base and the trade centre of a tobacco-growing region. To the right: Sapanca Lake, northeast of which lies the large town of Adapazari, severely damaged by the earthquake which occurred in August 1999. The whole area shown in this image was shocked by a wave of strong earthquakes starting with a sequence on 17 August 1999 (epicentre between Izmit and Bursa).
See the results of a joint ESA/ESRIN/CNES study effort at the time: interferometric fringes computed from a pair of ERS-1 and ERS-2 scenes acquired on consecutive days before and after the earthquake. The fringes were superimposed on a SAR amplitude image. By further superimposition of these fringes onto a Landsat 7 TM image, an image product was derived that enabled a first assessment of damages and their location.
Bottom of the image: Lake Iznik.

Click on the thumbnail image to see a higher resolution version of this image; a very high resolution image, 1966 x 1976 pixels, 1261987 bytes, is also available.