A wall of Saharan dust that was captured in an image from March 3, 2004, had billowed out over the Atlantic and begun to spread northward by the next day. This image of the massive plume of dust was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite on March 4, 2004. Countries pictured are (top to bottom) Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal (left), and Mali (right). At bottom left are the Cape Verde Islands, and west of Morocco are the Canary Islands, veiled by the blowing dust.

The high-resolution image provided above is 1 kilometer per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.

Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC