Image:STS100-704-152RioGrandeRift0.jpg

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The Rio Grande rift, seen from the Space Shuttle. The earth's limb dominates the bottom of the image, with cirrus clouds obscuring very little of New Mexico. North is the top of the image. The image distorts features differently; north-south features get more compressed when viewed toward the earth's limb (south); the east-west features are relatively less compressed. The course of the Rio Grande, flowing from north to south, starts from the top of the image, next to Valles Caldera National Preserve, flowing diagonally across the image, past the Sandia mountains. White Sands is the central feature of the image; The Carrizoso malpais lies to the north of White Sands, separated from the Rio Grand by a series of mountain ranges, successively, the Oscura mountains, the San Andreas mountains, the Organ mountains the Franklin mountains, and the Sierra Juarez. The Rio Grande starts flowing southeasterly between the Franklin mountains and the Sierra Juarez.

The continental divide is approximately the left side of the image. The Gila river flows to the Gulf of California, rather than to the Gulf of Mexico.

The vast plains called the 'Llano Estacado' , Spanish for 'staked plains' lie to the right of the image. When the Spanish entered these plains, they could only compare them to the sea, a sea of grass.

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current22:41, 31 January 2004500×510 (33 KB)Ancheta Wis (Talk | contribs) (The Rio Grande rift, seen from the Space Shuttle.)

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