Ta'ū
- ISS002-E-9891
- 18 July 2001
- 00:01 UTC
The island of Ta'ū is the largest and westernmost of the Manu'a Islands group — a small grouping of islands located at the eastern end of the Samoan archipelago that includes the islands of Ta'ū, Ofu-Olosega, and several smaller islets and offshore rocks. Ta'ū lies 10 km southeast from the Ofu-Olosega pair and 110 km east from Tutuila. It is the second largest island of the territory of American Samoa, with an area of 39 km², and the fourth largest of the Samoan archipelago.
Ta'ū is approximately rectangular in shape, measuring 10 km in length (east to west) and up to 6 km in width at the western and eastern extremities. The island's dramatic appearance is the result of the catastrophic collapse of the Lata shield volcano — the entire island is the remnants of the volcano's northern flank, with the large embayment of the southern coast being the remnant of the collapsed caldera. From the southern shore the land rises through a series of flat steps (known as the Liu Bench) to a tall escarpment reaching a height of 931 m at the Lata peak — the highest point of American Samoa — that lies at the eastern end of the Mataalaosagamai Ridge.
Much of the island's coast is cliff lined or composed of steep slopes that drop either directly to the sea or to a narrow coastal strip. Narrow fringing reefs are present on the east, west and north coasts.
45 km east from Ta'ū lies the Vailulu Seamount — an active volcano that marks the current location of the Samoan hotspot. The seamount rises from depths of around 4,800 m to a height of 590 m beneath the sea surface at the rim of its 2 km wide crater; the crater itself is 400 m deep.
image: earth sciences and image analysis laboratory, nasa johnson space center
