Satellite Images Of Sossusvlei Just when you thought it was safe to "get away from it all" and take a break at Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert.... Just bear in mind that some 'Big Brother' is always watching!
The Tsondab (top) And Sossusvlei Areas In The Namib Desert		The Namib Desert From Space

The Space Shuttle Orbiting Over The Namib - Sossusvlei Is On The Right Of The Tail -

Shuttle Image Of Coastal Clouds

The cloud bank that often hugs the coast of southwest Africa never drops rain on the Namib Desert. But this coastal fog, produced by the temperature inversion over the cold Benguela Current, frequently does penetrate the valleys between the dunes. Recent studies indicate that tiny flora and fauna have adapted to this "wet desert" by developing mechanisms for retrieving their water supply from the fog. Lacking such mechanisms, human beings have died of thirst on this mountain-backed desert. Some of them were hunting for diamonds deposited in these sands by geological processes that remain a mystery. Their bones, the bones of shipwrecked sailors, or more likely, the spars of their ships gave rise to the name "Skeleton Coast." The skeletons may even have been those of whales washed ashore. But it was not the rib-like dunes that evoked the name; this portion of the coast of Africa was called the Skeleton Coast long before such synoptic views as this were possible. Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D - NASA Shuttle Astronaut

Shuttle Astronaut Photograph The intricate pattern of large sand dunes is caused mainly by dry westerly winds cooled by the cold offshore Benguela current. Some of the dunes are extremely large, exceeding 300 metres. Running diagonally downward from the upper right corner is a dune-free tongue of alluvial gravel of the Tsauchab River and leading to Sossusvlei at the bottom. This is formed by occasional flash floods draining from the barren, rocky hills on the right of the picture.

Dust Plumes And A Phytoplankton Bloom Off Namibia Phytoplankton are microscopic plants that live in the ocean. There are many species of phytoplankton, each of which has a characteristic shape. Collectively, phytoplankton grow abundantly in oceans around the world and are the foundation of the marine food chain.

Landsat 7 NASA's Landsat 7 satellite was launched in April 1999 and gathers remotely sensed images of the land surface and surrounding coastal regions. The satellite detects spectrally-filtered radiation at visible, near-infrared, short-wave, and thermal infrared frequency bands from the sun-lit Earth in a 183 kilometre-wide swath while orbiting at an altitude of 705 kilometres. It provide global coverage at a spatial resolution of 30 metres - this describes how much detail in a photographic image is visible to the human eye and effectively means that it was as if the photo of the earth was taken from this height! Landsat 7 covers the whole earth's surface every 16 days and produces approximately 3,8 gigabits of data for each scene it photographs, which is roughly equivalent to nearly 15 sets of encyclopaedias at 29 volumes per set.