"Skylab4 photograph, with view to the north up the Rio Grande Rift from an
altidude of 270 mi (432 km) over central New Mexico. From lower left to
top center, the Albuquerque, Santa Domingo, Espanola, and San Luis basins
step over en echelon as the rift crosses a wide zone with
northeast-trending structural grain. The Estancia Basin, a shallow
downwarp developing along the east side of the Albuquerque Basin and
separated from it by the east-tilted fault block uplifts of the Manzano
and Sandia mountains, is conspicuous in the center foreground. The Jemez
lineament--one of the most active magmatic zones in the United States
during the past 5 million years--trends northeastward from basalt-capped
Mesa Prieta at left center margin, crosses the southern end of Sierra
Nacimiento, and passes beneath the Valles caldera at left center. Black
Mesa, a prong of Servillieta basalt extending southwestward to the
confluence of the Rio Chama and Rio Grande, lies along the Jemez
lineament northeast of the Valles caldera. The Rio Grande Gorge and the
scattered strato-volcanoes of the Taos Plateau volcanic field are
prominent geomorphic features at the south end of the San Luis Basin."
- Caption from the frontispiece of Guidebook to Rio Grande rift in New
Mexico and Colorado, New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources
Circular 163, Socorro, 1978. Thanks to Laura Gleasner at the Earth
Analysis Data Center in Albuquerque, archive respository for the films
from all the US manned space missions, for helping to locate this image;
and to Bob Hill, manager of the Graphics Department for the City of Santa
Fe, for scanning the photo for us. It is SL4-89-008, from the Skylab4
mission, November 16, 1973 to February 8, 1974; the photo was taken on
November 29.
- Here is the full-size image. An uncompressed
.gif version
(437,786 bytes) is also available.
- Some kind of guide map keyed to the image will appear here as soon
as we work out how to do it. Meanwhile, here are some clues.
Return to Miriam's Home Page |
Santa Fe
Public Library Home Page
Last update, August 20, 2000.
