Week 12: Do You See What I See? Stereoscopes and Satellite Images

This week in "Eyes in the Sky" we all tried our luck at satellite image interpretation.  By looking at two photographs of the same area (one for each eye), a two dimensional image can appear three dimensional. In order to only see the picture, Dr. Suresh brought in pocket stereoscopes used by the army back in the 1940s.  These allow the eye to focus only on the pictures, just like how horse eye flaps keep them going on the right path.  Dr. Suresh also brought along a ton of different double printed black and white aerial photographs of areas all around the United States taken around the 1960s. Our job was to look at the image in 3-D using the glasses and identify different signifying features from the photo. Since my computer is acting up and not allowing me to post pictures to blogger, I'll just describe the 5 aerial images I decided to look at:

Diamond Head, Hawaii

In this photo, there is a large crater in the top right hand connected by a ridge to a more eroded
mountain in the lower left hand corner.  The mountain is heavily built up with houses all the way up
to the top. The rest of the landscape is taken up by rolling hills that go down to the ocean edge.  I've actually climbed to the top of the diamond head crater, so it was interesting to see it from the sky.

Manhattan, New York

The largest buildings dominating the landscape from the time of this photograph are the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.  Although it's hard to see how high a building is from above, I could still tell how high the buildings are by the length of the shadow they cast. There is a definite grid pattern made by the streets of the city.  In the upper right hand corner, there is a harbor filled with shipping liners.

Black Dragon Canyon, Utah

The area is filled with deep gullies.  The jagged rocks forming the canyon are stratified in different layers.  A river runs from the upper left hand side of the image downward through through the large gulley on the left side.

Mt. Rainier

There is snow on most of the mountain, and vegetation starts at the base of the mountain.  A road winds along the mountain at the top of the image.  The peak pictured in the image is circular, meaning the mountain may have been a volcano.  I've been to Mt. Rainier as well, and when I went in June, there were almost 20 feet of snow still on the ground.

Longs Peak, Colorado

The peaks are very steep, carved by glaciers. There are three peaks and two valleys. The valley at the bottom of the photo is filled with debris. There is no large sign of vegetation in the entire image.  This may be because the mountains are at too high an elevation to grow many plants.   

Though I found these pictures fascinating, I don't think I could hold a candle to those who did this for a living — I felt like I was going blind after only about 30 minutes!