Banaba
- Landsat
- Path 082 Row 061
- 11 Jan 2001
Situated just south of the equator, 285 km east-southeast from Nauru and 430 km west of the Gilbert Islands, the solitary island of Banaba (formerly known as Ocean Island) forms an outlying territory of Kiribati — for administrative purposes it is considered as part of the Gilbert Islands.
The island is a raised coral atoll of 5.7 km² in area and is one of the premier examples of such formations to be found in the Pacific — the others being Makatea in the Tuamotu Archipelago and Nauru located to the west. The island's interior of stark bare limestone and coral pinnacles (the result of phosphate mining) contains the highest point above sea level in the whole of Kiribati, rising to 81 m.
image: earth sciences and image analysis laboratory, nasa johnson space center