This image from the German TerraSAR-X radar satellite shows the alpine upland from the lower reaches of the Inn valley through Rosenheim as far as Wasserburg am Inn (in the picture, north is to the right, west to the top). The original image was taken on 24 December 2008 shortly before 18:00 local time using the 'strip map' mode with three-metre resolution and in only one direction of polarisation. While the original image data reflect the brightness of the radar signal backscatter by means of grey scale values, this false colour photo (one pixel corresponds to ten metres) simultaneously represents the backscatter and its statistical variation. In this way, it visualises the surface properties of the imaged scene by very simple means. The red colour channel reflects the statistical variance of the data, the green channel the radar brightness and blue shows the difference between the two channels.