14 DAY TRIAL // Three days ago, on June 24, a NASA spacecraft captured this amazing view of a large sand storm blowing across the coasts of North Africa. Massive amounts of dust are blown above the Atlantic Ocean and will continue to spread around the world over the coming weeks.
This natural-color image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the NASA Aqua satellite. The scientific payload is capable of capturing data in 36 spectral bands.
As clearly visible in the image above, the storm put so much dust in the air that portions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are completely obscured from view. Off northern Morocco, the dust cloud made an eastward turn, heading over the Mediterranean and Gibraltar.
The clouds covering the right side of the image may be connected to the atmospheric front that caused the storm, but researchers are not yet sure if that is actually the case.