Instagram fans of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) were in for some retro pop art treatment Thursday. The American space agency shared an infrared image of the Anti-Atlas mountains located over 708 kilometers in southwestern Morocco.
The infrared image captured the mountain range in some popping bright colors that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. Taking the image, NASA wrote that the mountains were created because of African and Eurasian tectonic plates that struck nearly 80 million years ago. The great disaster had completely destroyed the Tethys Ocean.
By infrared, the image illuminates the various layers of rock and sediment present in the Anti-Atlas that give it a color-binding appearance, NASA explained. The Anti-Atlas Mountains are made up of limestone, sandstone, shale and gypsum. The image has been liked by over 5,46,452 Instagram users since it was shared. Although many have praised the image for the retro pop show of the mountains. One of the users commented, “Amazing and colorful picture”. Another user commented, “This is really amazing, a work of art.” For some, the image reminded them, “Our planet is the greenest piece of art ever”. Another user commented, “Excellent and educational”
NASA further reported that the image was taken on November 5, 2007, with the Spaceborne Advanced Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on a Terra satellite. The ASTER instrument was built in Japan for the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) while the design, calibration, and data validation are performed by a joint team of U.S. and Japanese scientists. According to NASA, ASTER receives high-resolution images of the Earth that are 15 to 90 square meters per pixel in 14 different waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from visible to thermal infrared light. Scientists use data collected by ASTER to create detailed maps of earth’s surface temperature, emissivity, reflectance, and elevation. ASTER is part of TERRA, the first satellite to create the Earth Observation System (EOS) which was launched in 1999.