Australian Outback around Lake Disappointment

Australian Outback around Lake Disappointment

Surrounded by sand dunes, Lake Disappointment is an ephemeral salt lake in one of the most remote areas of Western Australia. An early explorer supposedly named the lake in 1897 after following a number of creeks that he thought would lead to a large lake; they did, but the lake’s extremely salty water was not drinkable.

This scene was acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite on December 31, 2000.

Image provided by the USGS EROS Data Center Satellite Systems Branch as part of the Earth as Art II image series