In a remote area of the Sahara Desert lies a 3,000-foot-deep volcanic pit that looks like a macabre skull when viewed from space, NASA photographs show.
NASA’s Earth Observatory said last week that an astronaut aboard the International Space Station spotted the strange formation in the Tibesti Mountains in the Republic of Chad. The photographs were originally taken in February of this year and later re-shared by NASA.
“The 1,000-meter (3,300-foot) deep volcanic pit and Trou au Natron soda lake in northern Chad have the look of a ghostly face staring back at you,” NASA’s Earth Observatory said in a blog post last week.
The photos show what appears to be a huge skull formation, with two eye sockets and a nose surrounded by a white material that gives the appearance of a skull. NASA said the eye and nose sockets are actually “cinder cones: steep conical hills built around volcanic vents,” while the white material is “a mineral crust made from a salt known as natron.”
The Tibesti Mountains are considered one of the most remote and isolated areas in the world, which has made Trou au Natron difficult for scientists to investigate.
The formation looks like a skull in the Republic of Chad.NASA
NASA said research indicates the area was filled with a glacial lake about 14,000 years ago, and samples of fossilized aquatic algae collected in 2015 date back about 120,000 years.
Last month, NASA released images showing another “creepy face” that was captured when the Juno space probe passed by Jupiter.
“The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet,” the image description reads. “The low angle of sunlight highlights the complex topography of this region’s features, which scientists have studied to better understand the processes taking place in Jupiter’s atmosphere.”
The Tibesti Mountains are considered one of the most remote and isolated areas in the world. NASA Salt deposits in the Tibesti Mountains. De Agostini via Getty Images
NASA said people seeing faces in space images is a case of pareidolia, defined as “the effect that causes observers to perceive faces or other patterns in largely random patterns.”
Fox News Digital’s Michael Lee contributed to this report.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn