This panorama was taken by an astronaut looking south-east across the South American continent when the International Space Station (ISS) was almost directly over the Atacama desert near Chile’s Pacific coast. The high plains (3,000–5,000 metres) of the Andes mountains appear in the foreground, with a line of young volcanoes (dashed line) facing the much lower Atacama desert (1,000–2,000m elevation). Several salt-crusted dry lakes occupy the basins between major thrust faults in the Puna. The largest of these, Salar de Arizaro, is seen in the foreground in this view. The Atlantic Ocean coastline, where Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires sits along the Río de la Plata, is dimly visible at image top left
Photograph: ISS/NASA
The Guardian
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