{"id":287937,"date":"2025-11-28T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287937\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T13:57:08","slug":"earth-from-space-eye-of-the-sahara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287937\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth from Space: Eye of the Sahara"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Applications\/Observing_the_Earth\/Copernicus\/Sentinel-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission<\/a> captures a spectacular geological wonder in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania: the Richat Structure.<\/p>\n<p>This giant feature looks out from a sea of golden sand in the Adrar Region of northern Mauritania. Once thought to be the site of a meteor impact, the Richat Structure is now believed to have been caused by a process of uplift of a large dome of molten rock that, once at the surface, was shaped by wind, sand and water erosion. Geologists agree that the structure is at least 100 million years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The layered formation consists of a series of concentric rings and resembles a bull\u2019s eye from space, so is also known as the eye of the Sahara or the eye of Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The Richat Structure, 50 km in diameter, is easier to observe from space than from the ground, and has been a familiar landmark for astronauts since the earliest manned missions.<\/p>\n<p>In this comparison, we can see two views captured in September 2025: the image on the left is in natural colour, while the image on the right is a false-colour combination which highlights specific features.<\/p>\n<p>This remarkable formation exposes layers of sedimentary rock in different places, depending on the rates of erosion on the varying rock types. This can be better appreciated in the false-colour image. The more erosion-resistant quartzite sandstones appear in shades of red and pink and form the outer rings and high ridges internally, with valleys of less-resistant rock between them visible as darker areas. The central rings of the eye are about 80 m tall, with rocks older than those forming the outer rings.<\/p>\n<p>In the image on the left, the dark area surrounding the eye is part of the Adrar plateau of sedimentary rock standing some 200 m above the surrounding desert sands, which in turn are part of the Erg Ouarane, an immense sand expanse stretching hundreds of kilometres to Mali.<\/p>\n<p>Sand is also clearly visible encroaching into the structure\u2019s southern side. Here, individual trees and bushes can be spotted as tiny dots, which are visible in purple in the false-colour image, following a dry riverbed structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures a spectacular geological wonder in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania: the Richat Structure.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-287937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}