Dust blowing off West Africa

  • Credit

    NASA image by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response team at Goddard Space Flight Center

Dust blowing out of West Africa

This true-color image shows a large cloud of Saharan Desert dust (tan pixels) blowing westward over Niger, Mali, and Mauritania in northwestern Africa. The dust can also be seen extending westward over the Atlantic ocean in this scene. The bright feature in the eastern Atlantic (image bottom center) is sunglint, caused when the Sun’s rays are reflected off the surface of the ocean directly back at the satellite.

This image was acquired on October 11, 2004, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The high-resolution copy available here is 250 meters per pixel.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Aqua/MODIS

  • Start Date

    2004-10-11

  • Event Start Date

    2004-10-11

  • NH Image ID

    12521

  • NH Event ID

    10513

  • NH Posting Date

    2004-10-13