Abstract Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) images covering the Um Rus area in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt were evaluated for mapping geologic structure, lithology, and gold-related alteration zones. The study area is covered by Pan-African basement rocks including gabbro and granodiorite intruded into a variable mixture of metavolcanics and metasediments. The first three principal component analyses (PCA1, PCA2, PCA3) in a Red–Green–Blue (RGB) of the visible through shortwave-infrared (VNIR+SWIR) ASTER bands enabled the discrimination between lithological units. The results show that ASTER band ratios ((2+4)/3, (5+7)/6, (7+9)/8) in RGB identifies the lithological units and discriminates the granodiorite very well from the adjacent rock units. The granodiorites are dissected by gold-bearing quartz veins surrounded by alteration zones. The microscopic examination of samples collected from the alteration zones shows sericitic and argillic alteration zones. The Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) and Spectral Information Divergence (SID) supervised classification methods were applied using the reference spectra of the USGS spectral library. The results show that these classification methods are capable of mapping the alteration zones as indicated by field verification work. The PALSAR image was enhanced for fracture mapping using the second moment co-occurrence filter. Overlying extracted faults and alteration zone classification images show that the N30E and N–S fractures represent potential zones for gold exploration. It is concluded that the proposed methods can be used as a powerful tool for ore deposit exploration.