Vaygach Island
- Aqua MODIS
- 03 july 2004
- 08:30 UTC
Vaygach (Вайгач) lies in the Barents Sea region of the Russian Arctic, lying a few kilometers across the Yugorsky Shar Strait from the coast of northwestern Russia, and northeast from the mouth of the Pechora River (sediment plumes from the Pechora River are just visible at the bottom-left corner of the above image). The island forms a natural boundary between the small Pechora Sea (to the west) and the larger Kara Sea (to the east). To the north, across the Kara Gate Strait lies the large southern island of Novaya zemlya (top-left).
Vaygach measures around 100 km in length with a width of up to 45 km and covers an area of 3,398 km². The tundra-covered island is low-lying (170 m maximum elevation) with numerous streams, rivers and lakes. Vaygach is a continuation of the Pay-Khoy mountain range (bottom-right of the image), and on a larger scale is part of the Ural Mountain belt that runs from the southern Russia up through to Novaya Zemlya in the far north.
