Mariana Islands

The Mariana Islands, also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago made up of the summits of fifteen mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, north of New Guinea, and east of the Philippines, marking the eastern limit of the Philippine Sea. The chain is divided between two United States jurisdictions, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and, at its southern end, the territory of Guam.