A European satellite has found that the deadly earthquake in Nepal raised the city of Kathmandu by one to two meters (three to six feet), with large amounts of horizontal movement as well.

Teams of scientists at several institutions, including the German Aerospace Center, used data from the European Satellite Agency's Sentinal-1 satellite to calculate how the ground shifted both horizontally and vertically during the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake — the strongest to strike the country in more than 80 years — killed at least 5,000 when it struck on April 25.

The satellite uses a powerful radar system to detect small changes in land elevation and movement, which is part of a project known as INSARAP. The scientists compared a satellite pass over the area after the earthquake to data collected in the same region earlier in April, prior to the quake.

The data shows that a more than 60-mile-long and 19-mile-wide area around Kathmandu was affected by the extensive ground movement. However, the imagery is not precise, and there is still much more that scientists want to know about the precise ground movements made when the tension at the intersection of the Indian and Eurasian plates suddenly released.

The Indian plate dives under the Eurasian plate in Nepal, producing the uplift that helped form the towering Himalaya mountains.

In the newly created map, the deformations are colour-coded; near the plate boundary, the surface moved towards the satellite, that is, upwards (blue area). Further to the north there was related subsidence (yellow), a counter-movement that often occurs during earthquakes in subduction zones. In addition, the researchers detected a strong horizontal movement of up to two metres in a north-south direction in the area. In the image, the locations of numerous aftershocks in recent days are also displayed. Scientists at the EOC are continuing to compare archival data of the area with the latest radar images from Sentinel-1.

The high-resolution satellite imagery is being used to detect areas that likely saw the most damage, so the search and rescue operations can be targeted at those locations.

Pre-earthquake satellite images are being used as reference points to help shed light on the damage patterns as well.

The epicenter of the quake was between the densely populated capital city of Kathmandu and Pokhara.

Clearer Sentinel1 interferogram in 10 cm contours #NepalEarthquake showing ~1.2 m motion near Kathmandu @NERC_COMET pic.twitter.com/rm1zx9JNVN — John Elliott (@jrelliott82) April 29, 2015

The interferogram the scientists produced from the Sentinel satellite data shows that the ground subsided north of Kathmandu, and that the fault rupture did not reach the Earth's surface. BBC News reports that may be an indication that the quake did not release all the strain that had built up in that area over the years. (The blue colors show land that has been thrust upward relative to the satellite, which is registered in negative numbers since the distance between it and the satellite decreased.)

"We want to know which parts of the fault slipped," Wright, who is based at Leeds University, told the BBC. "And that's important because it tells us those parts that did not, and which are still primed and ready to go in a future earthquake."

In an interview with Mashable, Thomas Fritz, who leads a group within the German Aerospace Center's remote sensing technology institute, said the visualization the researchers produced shows shifts in the line of sight of the satellite. This means that it could be east-west shifts or north-south, or up or down.

Although they cannot be precise about the land movements observed, Fritz says there are other indications, including data from a GPS observing station in Kathmandu, that the capital city rose up by about 1.3 meters, or 4.3 feet. Additional data gathered in the next one to three weeks will provide even more precise measurements.

Fritz says the strong uplift toward the plate boundary, with less significant subsidence of mountain areas north of the city fit with what scientists know about earthquakes along that plate boundary.

"This fits quite well to this type of earthquake in these subduction zones where one continental plate dives underneath the other one and you have this strain that suddenly releases," he says.

He says it's possible that Kathmandu also shifted southward by more than a meter, or several feet.

The satellite pass did not shed light on the movement of Mt. Everest, where at least 18 hikers, including four Americans, were killed in an earthquake-related avalanche. He said it's likely the mountain's elevation changed by a few centimeters at most, since it was further from the epicenter of the quake.