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Where is it?Lake Mackay , Australia [ -22.40211170 , 128.99460842 ]
What ’s in the photo?Dozens of striped prosperous islands in shallow water
Oddly stripy, golden islands are littered across Lake Mackay in the Australian outback. When the ephemeral lake fills with water, these islands stand out against the blue-green background.
Which planet strike the photo?NASA Terra
When was it taken?Sept . 19 , 2010
This orbiter snatch shows dozens of stripy , favorable islands shimmer in the shallow waters of a giant temporary lake that provides a asylum for wildlife in one of Australia ’s most extreme environments .
An astronaut photo captured from the International Space in 2016 shows an empty Lake Mackay. When it is dry, a white layer of salts covers the lake’s bed.
Lake Mackay , also known by local Indigenous people as Wilkinkarra , is one of Australia ’s many ephemeral salt lake — temporary bodies of water that appear only after heavy rain and flooding . It is located along the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory in the Great Sandy Desert , which covers around 110,000 square miles ( 285,000 substantial kilometers ) and is the secondly - largest desert in the Australian outback .
When the lake is full , it covers around 1,800 straightforward miles ( 4,700 straight kilometre ) , making it Australia ’s fourthly - large lake behind Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre , Lake Torrens and Lake Gairdner , which are all also ephemeral , according toAustralian Geographic . It becomes salty due to a gamy concentration of minerals in the lake bed .
The lake ’s depth varies , but when it is full , its waters are likely between 20 inches ( 50 cm ) and " several metre " cryptic , according toNASA ’s Earth Observatory . depend on how much rain ends up in the washstand , Lake Mackay can persist for up to six months at a sentence .
In this effigy , the lake is slenderly over one-half full . Dozens of golden islands stand out in a sea of blues and green : The darker patches stretch between the chunks of land are remain firm urine puddled in the lake ’s deepest point , while the lighter hues are desert botany , alga or moist soils , according to the Earth Observatory .
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The largest islands in Lake Mackay are covered with strange parallel line of products running from E to west . These lines are lasting dune cut into the ground over million of years by breaking wind erosion . They mirror similar ridges that cover the not bad Sandy Desert and the surround area in the same focus .
exchangeable ephemeral lake form in other deserts across the globe , includingBadwater Basin in California ’s Death Valley National Parkand sometimesacross the Sahara Desert after extreme rain . These lakes often provide a temporary seaport for wildlife that spend long periods in some of the harshest environs on Earth , and Lake Mackay is no elision : It host more than 90 species of birds , reptile and mammal , let in rabbits and at times camel , which are both non - native to Australia , concord to a survey carried out by theEnvironmental Protection Agency of Western Australia .
— Green River winds through radioactive ' internal ear of darkness '
— penny-pinching - lifeless ' Land of Terror ' wait like an alien landscape in the Sahara
— Shapeshifting rusty river wind through Madagascar ’s ' red lands '
The ephemeral lake was also home to a now - nonextant mintage of marsupial known as theLake Mackay rabbit - wallaby(Lagorchestes asomatus ) . Not much is known about this species because only one gross skull has ever been regain . However , it belike lived until comparatively latterly because it is mentioned in records kept by Aboriginal Australians .
Lake Mackay also inspired the name for a giant lake on Saturn ’s largest moon Titan , namedMackay Lacus , which is around 110 miles ( 180 kilometre ) wide and is made up of a mixing of swimming methane and liquid ethane .
