Japan

Credit: Jeff Schmaltz; MODIS team; NASA, Posted on: Monday, 27 November 2006, 07:33 CST Download full size image

This image was acquired by the MODIS on the Terra satellite on November 9, 2006. The sky has a few clouds in it, but largely the island nation of Japan is unobscured. In the bottom left corner is the island of Kyushu. Moving furthr east is the smaller island of Shikoku.

The main island of Honshu, which stretches north and east of Shikoku fills most of the image. The northernmost island of Hokkaido isn't shown in this image. These are the largest islands - but there are approximately 3000 smaller islands in the Japanese archipelago.

The captial city of Tokyo is a large, sprawling gray area, which can be seen on the far right of the image, near the top middle. Osaka is near the center of the image, on the coast, just slightly northeast of Shikoku.

Japan is a populous country, but the population is mostly contained the in the large coastal cities; 70-80% of the country is forested and mountainous, and geographically unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use.

Because it is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where three tectonic plates meet, Japan has both earthquakes and volcanic activity. A tiny white dot that is snow cap of Mount Fuji, and active volcano, is visible on this image, just west of Tokyo.

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