NASA releases SRTM 1arc sec data

NASA has started to release global STRM elevation data at 1 arcsec resolution. This is about 30m per pixel, good enough to make a rough analysis of peaks prominence for using on SOTA catalogs elaboration.
In the past this level of accuracy was only available on US territories, but now NASA is releasing it on a global level.

Data can be downloaded (after free registering) at

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Thanks Mikel - I hadn’t spotted that. It certainly makes a difference for the area I’m working on.

Simon, G4TJC

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I believe that Google earth has a minimum resolution of 15m and the highest resolution is at 15cm for some areas.

Mat/K0MOS

Thank you very much, Mat, but I’ve found errors (intentionally added?) on lat-lon on GE up to 20m, and larger ones on heights. On the other side, you can’t download its data to work with them with other software. Fortunately in some european areas we have cartography up to 1 m resol, or if not, of 5m resol (It is a EU common resolution which may enforce all EU countries to have this facilities for free, but I’m not sure if it has been strictly followed by all of them)

I can only speak as a beginner at this, but I would say they are complementary.

Manually searching (and flooding) with Google Earth (and a map) is finding of the order of 90% of the prominences LandSerf & WinProm find for me from SRTM. But a similar proportion (maybe slightly fewer) are missed by the automatic searches. This seems a particular problem with coastal features. Hopefully combining the two will achieve 100% accuracy. :wink:

It’s all jolly good fun anyway.

Simon

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thank you for that info will have to check it out