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This {photograph}, taken by a crew member aboard the Worldwide House Station, exhibits a part of the central Namib Desert simply inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Brandberg Massif, a round mass of rock that varieties Namibia’s highest mountain, is seen within the middle of the picture. The mountain stands 2,573 meters (8,442 toes) above sea stage.
The massif is understood by the identify “Brandberg” in Afrikaans, Dutch, and German, and “Daures” within the native Damara language. The mountain is sacred to the San people, whose ancestors are thought to have created the well-known “White Lady” rock portray.
The Namib is an ancient coastal desert the place soils are skinny or non-existent. The dearth of deep soils makes it attainable for quite a lot of colours and textures of various rock varieties to be noticed from the house station. Brandberg Massif itself seems in boring pink tones. Geologists classify the mountain as a granitic intrusion, much like the well-known El Capitan massif in Yosemite National Park. All of the granitic landscapes on this picture had been put in place as a part of a continental breakup 132 million years in the past, when the land plenty we now know as South America and Africa started to float aside.
A lot older rocks are additionally seen. Geologists suppose the gray-toned schist northwest of Brandberg shaped 750 to 650 million years in the past, and the red-toned sedimentary rocks to its southwest shaped 300 to 250 million years in the past. The Messum Crater, the remnant of one in every of Earth’s largest volcanic eruptions, shaped at roughly the identical time because the continental breakup.
Indicators of human exercise are additionally seen. The city of Uis, centered on a tin mine, serves as a jumping-off level for vacationers visiting rock work and archeological websites within the space, particularly within the Tsisab Gorge.
Astronaut {photograph} ISS070-E-76460 was acquired on January 21, 2024, with a Nikon D5 digital digital camera utilizing a focal size of 170 millimeters. It’s offered by the Worldwide House Station (ISS) Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Distant Sensing Unit, Johnson House Middle. The picture was taken by a member of the Expedition 70 crew. The picture has been cropped and enhanced to enhance distinction, and lens artifacts have been eliminated. The International Space Station Program helps the laboratory as a part of the ISS National Lab to assist astronauts take footage of Earth that will likely be of the best worth to scientists and the general public, and to make these photographs freely obtainable on the Web. Further photographs taken by astronauts and cosmonauts may be considered on the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Justin Wilkinson, Texas State College, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.
