A catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet

• Credit:

  NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

Dust blew over the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran in early June 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of the region on July 12, 2010. The dust forms a fuzzy, beige, U-shaped plume that roughly mimics the border between southern Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Source points for the dust plume are not obvious in this image, but the dust may have arisen from one or more of the sand seas that stretch along Afghanistan’s southern border. According to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, this area ranks among the world’s most dust-prone, so dust storms in the region are fairly common.

1. References

2. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. (2003). Forecasting Dust Storms. Accessed July 12, 2010.

Images & Animations

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• Database Updated: May 19, 2013