This image in south-western Jordan lies as an unusual landscape. Mountains of granite and sandstone rise next to valleys filled
This image in south-western Jordan lies as an unusual landscape. Mountains of granite and sandstone rise next to valleys filled with red sand. Some of the mountains reach a height of about 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) above sea level, and many have near-vertical slopes. So alien is this landscape, it’s nicknamed “Valley of the Moon,” and it has served as the film set for a movie about Mars. Yet nomadic people have lived here for thousands of years. Declared a protected area in 1998, this unearthly landscape is Wadi Rum. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-colour image on July 27, 2001. The scene includes part of Wadi Rum and an adjacent area to the east. East of the protected area, fields with centre-pivot irrigation make circles of green and brown (image upper right). As the earth tones throughout the image attest, the area is naturally arid, receiving little annual precipitation and supporting only sparse vegetation. Between rocky peaks, the sandy valleys range in colour from beige to brick.
Size: 3500px × 5396px
Location:
Photo credit: © World History Archive / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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