A satellite image of Wadi Rum, Jordan
The image, acquired by NASA’s EO-1 satellite, shows Wadi Rum, a splendid valley, featuring bizarre terrain, near Aqaba, Jordan.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team and the United States Geological Survey.
NASA recently published a wonderful satellite image of Wadi Rum, a splendid valley, located in southwestern Jordan, near Aqaba. Wadi Rum, declared a protected area in 1998, is the largest valley in Jordan, and features bizarre landscape. Mountains of granite and sandstone rise next to valleys filled with red sand. Some of the mountains reach a height of about 1,700 meters above sea level, and many have very steep slopes. Intriguingly, Wadi Rum is also known as the “Valley of the Moon,” and it has served as the film set for a movie about the planet Mars.
NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite acquired this natural-color image on 27 July 2001. The scene includes part of Wadi Rum and an adjacent area to the east. East of the protected area, irrigated fields make circles of green and brown (image upper right). As the land colors throughout the image indicate, the area is naturally arid, receiving little rain annually, and supporting only trace vegetation. Between the peaks, the sandy valleys range in color from beige to brick.
British army officer Thomas Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, who fought in the Arab Revolt of 1917–1918, made frequent references to Wadi Rum in his book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A prominent feature of the protected area is named after the book, and several remarkable sites in Wadi Rum bear the name of Lawrence of Arabia.
References
Wadi Rum, Jordan
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=49945
Wikipedia