STS091-719-059 Tehran Area, Iran June 1998

The physical setting for the Iranian capital and largest city, Tehran (darker landscape center of image), consists of mountains north of the large urban area and a few scattered hills on the relatively flat plains south of the city. Tehran with an estimated population of 10 million people is geographically located in north central Iran along the southern slopes of the Elburz Mountains (bottom quarter of image with some cloud cover). Recognized as Iran?s economic and industrial core area, the region around Tehran experiences four seasonal regimes but the overall climate is semiarid. Precipitation amounts decrease from north to south and general ephemeral stream drainage is towards the south away from the higher elevations of the Elburz Mountains.

NASA-Johnson Space Center

Front Page