Namibia’s great Sand Sea appears here as a reddish zone along part of the coast (image center). The Sand Sea is more than 350 kilometers (220 miles) long, giving a sense of the length of the visible dust plumes. A light-toned sediment plume enters the sea at the mouth of the Orange River (image lower left), southern Africa’s largest river.
Astronaut photograph ISS040-E-16513
was acquired on June 21, 2014, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a
42 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility
and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The
image was taken by the Expedition 40 crew The image in this article has been enhanced to improve contrast. 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 M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs at NASA-JSC.
- Instrument(s):
- ISS - Digital Camera - NASA
