• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Gigantic “Pyramid Dunes” Of The Sahara Desert Seen From Space

November 11, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Viewed from space, the western edge of the Sahara Desert looks like another world. Its abundance of red-tinged sand turns into a sea of dunes that ebb and flow with the wind, unabated by foliage and other earthly obstacles.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station recently took this photograph while orbiting over southeastern Morocco, not far from the border with Algeria.

Advertisement

The beautiful image, recently shared by NASA Earth Observatory, captures an area called Erg Chebbi, a sand sea that covers an area of 18 by 9 kilometers (11.2 by 5.6 miles) in North Africa.

The stretching sand sheet contains numerous features including star dunes, also known as pyramid dunes. These mounds are formed by wind blowing masses of sand from multiple directions, creating a dune with a central peak and several “ridges” that radiate outward, like a star shape or pyramid.

An aerial view of Erg Chebb (a sand dune sea in North Africa) featuring some helpful labels.

The same aerial view of Erg Chebbi featuring some helpful labels.

Image credit: ISS/NASA, annotated by NASA Earth Observatory

Although commonly associated with the Sahara, star dunes can also be found in the Arabian Peninsula, China, and North America, as well as elsewhere in the Solar System, such as Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan.

This type of dune can form some of the tallest on Earth, reaching up to 300 meters (984 feet) high in other parts of the world like the Badain Jaran Desert in China.

Advertisement

“Despite their large size and prominence within sand seas, or possibly because of their large size, star dunes are the least studied dune type,” comments a 2024 paper in the journal Nature.

Erg Chebbi may seem like an inhospitable landscape, but as ever, life finds a way. Towards the bottom of the dune complex, there’s a large aquifer that supports palm groves and the town of Marzouga.

At the top of the dunes, it’s possible to just see a small cluster of camps. Traditionally, these types of camps would have belonged to the Indigenous Amazigh (Berber) peoples, who lived nomadically in North Africa for millennia. Today, however, they are mainly frequented by tourists who are keen to experience the Sahara Desert with their own eyes.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. US stock futures lead Asia lower, dollar gains on yen
  2. Adding Gold To Wine Could Be The Key To Making It Taste Better
  3. A New Look At Some Old Fossils Has Just Rewritten The Story Of Human Evolution
  4. The Atlantic Gulf Stream Was Unexpectedly Strong During The Last Ice Age – New Study

Source Link: Gigantic "Pyramid Dunes" Of The Sahara Desert Seen From Space

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “Breaking Records By Extraordinary Margins”: 22 Of Earth’s 34 Vital Signs At Record Levels
  • “The Most Important Unsolved Problem In Pure Math”: Where Is Humanity At With Prime Numbers?
  • The “Great Halloween Solar Storms”: 22 Years Ago, One Of The Most Powerful CMEs Ever Hit Earth
  • IFLScience Investigates The Loch Ness Monster: A Documentary On The Science, The Story, And The Power Of Belief
  • Remarkably Preserved 23-Million-Year-Old “Frosty” Rhino Discovered In Canadian Arctic
  • Want To “Time Travel” Back To Your Childhood? Baby Filter Image Illusion Could Unlock Lost Memories
  • The Sun Is Giving Us A Spooky Grimace Just In Time For Halloween
  • Comet 3I/ATLAS Reaches Perihelion Today – “Alien Spaceship” Hypothesis To Be Tested Once And For All
  • Search For Shackleton’s “Lost” Ship Uncovered 1,000 Dimples On The Antarctic Seafloor – What Are They?
  • Your Banana Smoothie Might Be Kind Of Self-Defeating, Health-Wise
  • What Are Those Zigzags You See In Spiders’ Webs? Study Finds They Could Be A Kind Of Alarm System
  • The Deepest Fish Ever Filmed Was Found 8,336 Meters Below The Surface In A Vast Ocean Trench
  • Supersonic Flight Without The Boom: NASA’s X-59 Experimental Aircraft Takes Flight For First Time
  • The Oldest Ice Ever Recovered Contains Antarctic Air Bubbles From 6 Million Years Ago
  • Freaky “Frankenstein” Worms Can Get Reproduction Wrong And End Up With Two Heads
  • Hedgehog, Lasagna, and Brussels Sprouts: Meet 2025’s Newly Named North Atlantic Right Whales
  • Can You Be Allergic To Other People? Yes, And It Sounds Like The Worst Thing Ever
  • Animals With “Urban Superpowers” Lurk In London’s Underground, And Some Of Them Want To Drink Your Blood
  • This Is The Largest Radio Color Image Of The Milky Way Ever Assembled – And It’s Gorgeous
  • Why We Can’t Stop Watching True Crime: The Psychological Pull And The Ethical Push
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version