A white veil of dust had settled over the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea on October 8, 2004, when the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor aboard the OrbView-2 satellite captured this image. The dust is blowing out of the dried Hamoun Wetlands in the Sistan Basin straddling the Afghanistan/Iran border. Most of the dust is trapped in southwestern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan by the Central Makran Mountains, though some has escaped through river valleys and is blowing over the sea. The verdant green strip running down the right edge of the image is formed by the Indus River and the agricultural land it supports.
NASA images courtesy the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE.
