Radar image of Houston, Texas

Radar image of Houston, Texas Today’s Image of the Day from the European Space Agency features a satellite view of Houston, Texas from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission.

The city appears in shades of white and grey, while the surrounding land appears in shades of yellow. The Gulf of Mexico, as well as the bayous that dissect Houston, are dark blue.

Buffalo Bayou is a slow-moving river that cuts through the city before joining Galveston Bay, the largest estuary in Texas.  North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The Port of Houston, which spreads across 50 miles in the northwest section of the bay, is one of the busiest ports in the world.

With a population of over 2.3 million people, Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States.

Image Credit: ESA 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer