Tibetan Fan

Alluvial Fan and Glacial River, Xinjiang Province, China (credit: NASA Aster-Terra program)

Sometimes, space photography could be excellent additions to an abstract art exhibit. NASA's Terra Earth monitoring program captured an image of a large alluvial fan formed in the Kunlun Mountains in western China and Tibet. The mountains lie on the north-western edge of the Tibetan Plateau and the southern border of the hyper-arid Taklimakan Desert of Central Asia. An electric blue, glacial-fed river flows out of the mountains carrying eroded silts. They becomes deposited by the river as it flows out onto the flat landscape becoming alluvial fans as the water vanishes into the desert.

Earth images like this could hang well along with any Monet, Picasso, or de Kooning painting in an art or museum gallery.

WHB

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