Above and Beyond: Cordillera Huayhuash

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with the NASA Earth Observatory.

All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA except:

·       Alfred Wegener photo courtesy of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

·       Drawings of continental drift by Alfred Wegener from The Movements of the Continents and the Oceans

·       Lystrosaurus illustration courtesy of Nobu Tamura

·       Sea creature illustration copyright The National Library of Israel, Shapell Family Digitization Project _and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Geography – Historic Cities Research Project

·       Photo of Half Dome courtesy of D.L. Peck, U.S. Geological Survey

·       Photo of Kanchenjunga Mountain courtesy of Wikimedia user Anirban c8

·       Mountain formation illustrations by Marc Lussier (STScI)

·       Aerial photo of the Himalayan Mountains courtesy of Wikimedia user Pipimaru

 

Music courtesy of Associated Production Music

Written by Andrea Gianopoulos

Designed by Marc Lussier

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Aerial view of the snow-capped Andes. 

 

Text, Cordillera Huayhuash, Peruvian Andes, South America. The tallest mountains in the Americas are the Andes Mountains. 

 

One prominent but short Andean mountain range is Cordillera Huayhuash, which holds 20 steep peaks with sharp ridges in an area just over 15 miles long. 

 

Six of these peaks reach altitudes above 19,500 feet. 

 

The highest of these is Nevado Yerupaja, Peru's second-highest peak at more than 21,700 feet high. 

 

The peak is spotlighted.