View HGT files in your browser
The tiles of heights the Space Shuttle mapped in 2000, a degree of the earth each. Open one right here, shaded in its place over OpenStreetMap. The file never leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your heights open in their place on the map, colored from low to high and shaded with light from the northwest.
- Colored from low to high • Shaded from the northwest
- Inspect • The height under the cursor
- Measure • A profile of the heights along a line
- Export • The view as PNG, the profile as CSV
About HGT
In February 2000 the Space Shuttle Endeavour mapped the land between 60° north and 56° south with radar, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission of NASA and the NGA. Its heights came out as HGT tiles from 2003, 3 arc seconds apart, about 90 m, and 1 arc second apart, about 30 m, for the whole world from 2014.
An HGT holds nothing but heights: big-endian 16 bit meters in a square, 1201 by 1201 at 3 arc seconds or 3601 by 3601 at 1, with -32768 where the radar saw nothing. Its name, like N37W123.hgt, is its southwest corner, so a renamed tile loses its place. Pilots’ apps, panorama makers and GIS tools all read them.
Filepeek places the tile from its name and size and colors its heights from low to high, shaded with light from the northwest. Inspect gives the height under the cursor, Measure draws a profile of the heights along a line, and Export saves the view as PNG and the profile as CSV.
SRTM height tile
.hgt
Format
- MIME type
- application/octet-stream
- Made by
- NASA and the NGA, from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
- Released
- 2003
Inside the file
- Holds
- Heights in meters
- Points
- 1201 or 3601 a side
- Spacing
- 3 or 1 arc seconds
- Placed by
- Its name, like N37W123
Opens in every browser
Filepeek opens HGT tiles on a map in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. On their own, browsers download them.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open HGT
- WindowsQGIS • Global Mapper
- MacQGIS
- iPhone and iPadNo app built in opens it
- AndroidNo app built in opens it
Questions
How do I open an HGT file?
Drop it on this page or choose Peek an HGT. Keep its name as it came, like N37W123.hgt, since that’s where on the earth it is.
Can I open a zipped tile?
Yes. Drop the .hgt.zip or .hgt.gz and open the tile inside, which goes on the map like any other.
Why are there holes in the heights?
The radar saw nothing on some steep slopes, dunes and lakes, and SRTM’s first tiles keep those as -32768. Filepeek leaves them clear. Later versions, like SRTMGL1 version 3, fill them in.
Are the heights above the sea?
They’re meters above the EGM96 geoid, close to the sea’s mean level, rather than above the ellipsoid a GPS works on.