{"id":329734,"date":"2025-12-05T16:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/329734\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:12:09","slug":"seeing-a-bulls-eye-in-the-desert-photo-of-the-day-for-dec-5-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/329734\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing a bull’s-eye in the desert photo of the day for Dec. 5, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the middle of Mauritania’s Sahara Desert, surrounded by an ocean of sand, lies a colossal stone spiral that seems almost too perfect to be natural. From orbit, in a recent image taken by the European Space Agency<\/a>‘s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission<\/a>, it looks like a target etched into the desert: the Richat Structure, better known as the Eye of the Sahara.<\/a><\/p>\n

What is it?<\/p>\n

The Richat Structure spans around 31 miles (50 km) across, large enough to be a clear landmark for astronauts passing overhead.<\/p>\n

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On the ground, its rings are hard to appreciate; dunes, heat haze, and uneven terrain all conspire to hide the full shape. But from space, especially in the images taken by the Copernicus satellite, the structure appears as a set of concentric circles, like ripples frozen in rock.<\/p>\n

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For years, its near-perfect circle led scientists to suspect a dramatic origin: a meteorite impact. A formation that round, in the middle of nowhere, had to be a crater<\/a> \u2014 or so it seemed.<\/p>\n

Where is it?<\/p>\n

This image was taken over the Adrar region of northern Mauritania.<\/p>\n

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A false-color image of the Richat Structure shows its chemical composition. (Image credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESA)Why is it amazing?<\/p>\n

Further fieldwork and analysis overturned the impact crater<\/a> theory, as researchers found no signs of shocked quartz, melted rock, or other telltale traces of a high-energy collision. Instead, the Richat Structure turned out to be something more subtle and, in many ways, more impressive: a deeply eroded geological dome.<\/p>\n

Millions of years ago, a large bubble of molten rock pushed up beneath the surface, gently doming the overlying sedimentary layers. Over time, wind, water, and sand did what they do best in the Sahara: sandblast and carve away the softer rocks. Harder rocks, like quartzite-rich sandstones, resisted erosion and remained as high ridges, while the softer layers between them were worn into valleys.<\/p>\n

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The result is a natural cross-section of Earth’s crust, peeled back in rings. The outer rings mostly consist of more erosion-resistant rock, while the interior exposes older layers that once lay deep underground. Geologists estimate that parts of this structure are at least 100 million years old.<\/p>\n

In the false-color composite images from the Copernicus satellite mission, the story of the landscape becomes much clearer as specific wavelengths of light are combined to highlight different materials and surface features: the tougher quartzite sandstones appear in shades of red and pink, tracing the outer rings and inner ridges; darker patches between these rings mark zones of softer, more eroded rock; and tiny purple specks in the southern part of the structure reveal individual trees and bushes following a dry riverbed that snakes into the Eye. From the vantage point of Earth orbit, the Eye continues to stare back at us: a giant geological bull’s-eye, etched into the Sahara, quietly recording a deep history of Earth written in stone.<\/p>\n

Want to learn more?<\/p>\n

You can learn more about Earth-observing satellites<\/a> and the Copernicus program.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the middle of Mauritania’s Sahara Desert, surrounded by an ocean of sand, lies a colossal stone spiral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-329734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}