File:Nambian Desert (MODIS 2020-04-15).jpg

English: Soft orange tones, rusts, tans and ochres make up the palette that paints the landscape of Western Namibia. By April, the rainy season in the interior comes to an end, lending a soft wash of green vegetation to the high escarpment inland while along the coast the extremely arid Namib Desert remains dry. In some areas of the Namib, rainfall is so scarce year-round that the only moisture comes from offshore fog, allowing only a few highly-adapted animal and plant species to survive.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of western Namibia, highlighted by the Namib Desert along the coast, on April 11, 2020.

The Namib Desert, seen as a gorgeous orange in this image, is estimated to have existed for more than 55 million years, making it the world’s oldest desert. Cut with long-dry riverbeds, the desert has essentially no surface water. The soft sands form tall, shifting sand dunes, which are driven by strong onshore winds. These are some of the highest and dunes on Earth, rising as high as 1,000 to 1,167 feet (304 to 256 meters) in some areas. In the interior of Namibia, the soft orange sands of the coastal desert rise to a rugged interior plateau, with outcroppings of dark, colorful rocks and pale green vegetation.