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To keep the spooky time of year , NASAhas free a bone - cool photo of a creepy " skull " that appear to glower up toward space from the gist of an enormous volcanic pit in Chad .
The uncanny image was capture Feb. 12 by an nameless astronaut aboard theInternational Space Station(ISS ) , as the spacecraft pass above the Tibesti Massif — a mountain range that unfold across the essence of the Sahara Desert through Chad and Libya . The figure of speech was unfreeze on Oct. 31 byNASA ’s Earth Observatory .
NASA has shared an astronaut photo of a skull-shaped feature, made up of natron, cinder cones and shadows, lurking in a giant caldera in the Sahara Desert.
The skull - shaped lineament is situate on the storey of Trou au Natron , also know as Doon Orei — a 3,300 - foot - wide ( 1,000 meters ) volcanic caldera , or volcanic crater , that was left behind by a monumental volcanic eruption 100 of M of year ago . The geological indentation is site just to the south of Tarso Toussidé , an even large volcanic feature film that is home to a potentially active stratovolcano . ( Trou au Natron translates to " natron hole " in French , while Doon Orei mean " big hole " in Teda . )
The white colour of the skull ’s backtalk , nose and provide cheek is given off by natron , a by nature occurring salty mixture of Na carbonate decahydrate , Na bicarbonate , sodium chloride and sodium sulfate . The eyes and olfactory organ hole areas are clinker strobile — steep conic hills build around volcanic vent that tower above the rest of the caldera floor . The darker area to the leftfield of the face is the shadow cast by the marvellous flange of the crater , which helps give the skull its distinctive physique .
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This photo taken from within the caldera shows the natron, a cinder cone and the the caldera’s rim, which all combine to produce the skull when viewed from above.
Trou au Natron is innocent and exanimate today , but experts believe it was a thriving frozen lake until around 14,000 years ago .
In the 1960s , researchers discovered fossil of sea snails and plankton beneath the pit ’s natron - cover floor , consort to Earth Observatory . And in 2015 , afollow - up expeditionfound algal fossils that date back 120,000 years .
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Despite being at least as old as the fossil within the dried - up lake , Trou au Natron is actually one of the young volcanic feature in the Tibesti Massif , according to Earth Observatory . The fence in volcanoes are in all likelihood much erstwhile .
This is not the first sentence that a skull - mould feature has been pick out from space . In 2016 , a weather orbiter double of Hurricane Matthew — a category 5 tropical violent storm that kill more than 600 people across the Caribbean — captured the swirling vortexcosplaying as a sinister shadowy facewith a bright red eye and distinct teeth as it made landfall in Haiti .
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