Mysterious skull-shaped volcanic pit spotted in Sahara desert from space
Images taken by the International Space Station show a skull-shaped volcanic pit in a remote area of the Sahara desert in the Tibesti Mountains in the Republic of Chad. The images were later re-shared by NASA.
The 1,000-meter deep volcanic pit and soda lake Trou au Natron in northern Chad has the look of a ghostly face staring back at you, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.
The images show what appears to be a massive skull formation, with two eye sockets and a nose surrounded by a white material that builds out the appearance of a skull. NASA said the eye sockets and nose are actually “cinder cones—steep conical hills built around volcanic vents,” while the white material is “a mineral crust made of a salt known as natron.”
The Tibesti Mountains are considered one of the most remote and isolated areas of the world, which has made researching Trou au Natron difficult for scientists.
NASA did say that research indicates the area was filled with a glacial lake roughly 14,000 years ago, and samples of fossilized aquatic algae collected in 2015 dates back an estimated 120,000 years.
Last month NASA released images showing another “eerie face” that was captured when the Juno space probe passed Jupiter. NASA said that people spotting 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.”