images

Rub’ al Khali desert seen from space

by

Nasa/GSFC/Novapix

Reference

t-afara-00005

Date

2009-04-10

The Arabian Peninsula’s Empty Quarter, known as Rub’ al Khali, is the world’s largest sand sea, holding about half as much sand as the Sahara Desert. The Empty Quarter covers 583,000 square kilometers (225,000 square miles), and stretches over parts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the Empty Quarter on December 2, 2005, covering an area of 54.8 x 61.9 km, located near 20.7 degrees north latitude, 53.6 degrees east .
Grey White salt flats, known as sebkhas or sabkhas, separate the dunes.