About 130 kilometers (80 miles) inland from the coastal city of Esperance lies Lake Dundas, one of the largest in southwestern Australia. It is part of a system of lakes of various sizes, and its unique appearance can only be appreciated to its fullest when the landscape feature is seen from above.
This image was captured using the
NASA Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite, which used its Advanced Land Imager (ALI) instrument to observe Lake Dundas in natural-color. The view has been rotated, which means that north is to the right in this view.
The main reason why this lake looks the way it does is because it is continuously exposed to abundant sunshine, while at the same time receiving only minimal rainfall. This makes its salt accumulate in crusts of various shapes and sizes, which are perfectly visible from satellite.
When the drainage channels that included Lake Dundas first formed, dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, and Antarctica was still attached to Australia. In fact, the rivers that used to fuel these channels are now located as much as 3,800 kilometers (2,400 miles) away, at the South Pole.
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