Arecibo, Puerto Rico July 1997.
Arecibo, a city along the northwest coast of Puerto Rico, can be identified as the highly
reflective area near the center of the picture. This northwest coast region of Puerto Rico has a
tropical wet climate. Rainfall amounts that exceed 60 inches (150cm) per year, coupled with the
underlying limestone rocks, have created a unique “karst” topographic landscape. The dark swath
of land inland but parallel to the coast shows the distribution of these hilly, densely
vegetated, steep sided limestone erosional features. Daytime cloud buildups, which are a
characteristic of the diurnal tropical precipitation pattern and are typical for the north facing
slopes of the island, can be seen on this image. These clouds and the small scale of the image
combine to obscure the location of the world’s largest radio telescope (the Arecibo
Observatory—National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center), which is located roughly 10 miles (16 km)
south of Arecibo. Sections of Highway 2, the main highway that encircles most of the island
commonwealth, are visible as a linear, light-colored feature, mainly west of Arecibo.
|