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by Christoph Hormann
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The Musaicum East Asia

Musaicum East Asia satellite image mosaic

The Musaicum East Asia is a regional visible color satellite image mosaic of East Asia with a ground resolution of 10m. It combines recent Sentinel-2 satellite imagery into the highest quality and most cloud free depiction of the region in this resolution class available today.

Coverage includes mainland China, Taiwan, Mongolia, North and South Korea and Japan. Not included are islands and reefs of the South China Sea.

It is generated using a classical mosaicing process derived from the methods and techniques developed for local mosaics, but with a high degree of automatization. This eliminates most of the time intensive manual steps, while maintaining high quality standards.

Compared to the Green Marble, the Musaicum East Asia offers much higher spatial resolution (10m compared to 250/300m) at the cost of slightly more heterogeneous coloring due to the smaller data basis. Cloud occurrence is comparable to my hand produced local mosaics with less than about one in 100k pixels significantly affected by clouds.

Compared to the Musaicum EU-Plus, the Musaicum West Asia and the Musaicum United States, aggregation techniques have been further improved, in particular regarding the different climate of the region.

Primary data source for the image is Sentinel-2 imagery from 2019 to 2025, in smaller parts also from 2016 to 2018.

In case you would like to read in more detail about this mosaic off-line a product description is available for download and offline reading as well.

Key properties

  • Visible color mosaic of East Asia including mainland China, Taiwan, Mongolia, North and South Korea and Japan
  • 10m base resolution
  • Based on Sentinel-2 data from 2016 to 2025
  • Includes full coverage of smaller lakes and coastal waters, no coverage of the open ocean and a few larger lakes
  • Shows atmosphere compensated surface color, available either as linear surface reflectance values or tone mapped for direct display
  • Available with illumination as recorded and with shading compensation

Product packaging

The mosaic is produced in different projections for different parts of the coverage area and is assembled in the target projection on demand. The previews of the whole mosaic shown here are in Lambert conformal conic projection. For use in web maps in Mercator projection by default a z14 grid (9.5546m nominal resolution) is provided.

The standard form of distribution of this mosaic is with an alpha channel for seamless blending with a background image for the open ocean - like the Green Marble. This is illustrated in the samples below. Other variants can be produced on request.

Musaicum East Asia with transparent oceans and alpha channel for seamless blending Musaicum East Asia blended with Green Marble based Ocean coloring Musaicum East Asia with transparent oceans and alpha channel for seamless blending (detail) Musaicum East Asia blended with Green Marble based Ocean coloring (detail)

Product options

In addition to the mosaic with illumination as recorded - which is the recommended version for direct visual applications - this mosaic is also available in a shading compensated version, where the differences in illumination due to the topography and shadows cast by mountains are compensated for. This version can be used, for example, in applications where a synthetic illumination is used to generate a custom shading effect.

Supplementary to the visual color mosaic a vegetation data set is available with the same coverage and source data, documenting the fractional herbaceous and woody vegetation as well as fractional water cover for every 10m pixel.

Musaicum East Asia detail with shading as recorded Musaicum East Asia detail with shading compensation Musaicum East Asia detail with shading as recorded Musaicum East Asia detail with shading compensation Musaicum East Asia vegetation map visualization Musaicum East Asia vegetation map visualization - detail

Sample gallery

Musaicum East Asia sample: Tazawa, Japan Musaicum East Asia sample: Osaka, Japan Musaicum East Asia sample: Aso Caldera, Kyushu, Japan Musaicum East Asia sample: Busan, South Korea Musaicum East Asia sample: Korea North/South border Musaicum East Asia sample: Pjonyang, North Korea Musaicum East Asia sample: Mount Paektu, North Korea/China border Musaicum East Asia sample: Harbin, Northeast China Musaicum East Asia sample: Okinawa Island Musaicum East Asia sample: Liaodong Peninsula, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Shanghai, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Taichung, Taiwan Musaicum East Asia sample: Beijing, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Huolinhe Coal Field, Inner Mongolia, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Nanjing, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Shantou, South China Coast Musaicum East Asia sample: Wuhan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Hainan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Bayan Obo Mining District, Inner Mongolia, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Kherlen River, Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: South China Karst forms near Jingxi, Guangxi, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Zunyi, Guizhou, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Chongqing, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Upper Bailong River and northern  Min Mountains, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Badain Jaran Desert, Northern China Musaicum East Asia sample: Tsetserleg, Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: Amne Machin Range, Kunlun Mountains, Qinghai, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Western shore of Uvs Nuur, western Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: Tongtian River valley, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Bugyai Kangri mountains, Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Pagsum Lake, southern Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Khüiten Peak and Kanas Lake, China/Mongolia/Russia Musaicum East Asia sample: Mount Everest, China-Nepal border Musaicum East Asia sample: North slope of the Himalayas near Kaqur Kangri and Maquan River, Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Xuelian Feng, Tian Shan, Xinjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Kashgar, Xinjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Japanese Alps Musaicum East Asia sample: Kanmon straits, Japan Musaicum East Asia sample: Gwangyang Steel Works, South Korea Musaicum East Asia sample: Qingdao, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Aquacultures near Ningde, South China Musaicum East Asia sample: Hefei, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Mount Langshan Danxia landform, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Yuan River floodplain near Yuanjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Xiaolangdi Reservoir, Central China Musaicum East Asia sample: Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Open pit mine in Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: Yellow River Ordos Loop near Wuhai, Inner Mongolia, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Ordos Desert, Inner Mongolia, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Jiuzhaigou valley, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Three Natural Bridges, Wulong Karst, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Kunming, Yunnan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, Yunnan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Minya Konka, Sichuan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Kangri Karpo Glaciers, eastern Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Tsangpo Gorge and eastern Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Beilu River, Qinghai, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Lakes on Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Dry lake and glacier in estern Mongolia Musaicum East Asia sample: Taklamakan dunes, Xinjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Gurbantünggüt Desert, Xinjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Lakes Manasarovar and Rakshastal and Mount Kailash, Tibet, China Musaicum East Asia sample: Oksalur, Xinjiang, China

Musaicum East Asia license inquiry

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What you are interested in

Tone mapped image mosaic with default tone mapping and alpha channel for seamless ocean blending
Mosaic with shading compensation
Linear surface reflectance data for custom processing
Vegetation map

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last updated Wed, 05 Nov 2025 21:33