Dust continued blowing eastward out of the Taklimakan Desert on April 19, 2008, although the plumes were less intense than they had been two days earlier. Besides covering almost the entire desert basin, dust plumes extended hundreds of kilometers eastward. North of the thickest dust plumes, skies northeast of the Taklimakan Desert appeared slightly hazy. Northwest of the desert basin, however, skies were crystal clear, with snowy mountain peaks contrasting with the deep blue lake in Kyrgyzstan. This natural-color image captured by the The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
