An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph while orbiting over northern Africa. The image shows a dune field known as Erg Chebbi, located in southeastern Morocco, near the border with Algeria and northeast of the Little Atlas mountain range. This erg, a wide sandy area covered with dunes, lies in the northwestern region of the Sahara Desert.
Dunes are created when the wind transports and deposits fine sand, forming mounds of sediment. The dunes in this photo display multiple smooth sides, known as slip faces, where sand has cascaded down from the peak. The windward side, located on the opposite side from the slip face, is where the wind blows material upward. The dune continues to grow vertically as long as sediment is available and the wind is strong enough to transport it upward. The large dunes crossing the center of the image, characterized by sharp multidirectional ridges, are star dunes. These are also known as pyramid dunes and are a distinctive feature of the Sahara.
The town of Marzouga and nearby communities appear at the bottom right of the image. A large, natural aquifer supports palm groves as well as crops in this arid region. Agricultural fields are the long linear features visible in the image’s bottom right corner.
Tourism provides an additional source of income for the communities due to their proximity to the Erg Chebbi dunes. Road lines, mainly created by off-road vehicles, are visible at the top of the image. Tent camps are located on the east side of the dune field, visible from space as small clusters of light-colored rectangular shapes. These camps are mostly used by tourists, though some of them could represent settlements of the Indigenous Amazigh (Berber) peoples.
Astronaut photograph ISS070-E-105480 was acquired on December 21, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 1,200 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 70 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Wilfredo García López/Jacobs-JETS II Contract at NASA-JSC.
