{"id":12105,"date":"2017-04-23T07:23:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T07:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=12105"},"modified":"2017-04-23T07:23:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T07:23:29","slug":"lake-mackay-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/lake-mackay-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake MacKay, Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
cREDIT: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA , CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brown hills speckle the eastern part of Australia\u2019s Lake MacKay in this satellite image.<\/span><\/p>\n

Located on the border of the states of Western Australia and Northern Territory, the salt lake only sees water after seasonal rainfall \u2013 if at all. It is classified as an ephemeral lake, meaning it exists only after precipitation. This is not the same as a seasonal lake, which sees water for longer periods.<\/span><\/p>\n

About half of Australia’s rivers drain inland and often end in ephemeral salt lakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The greens and blues in this image show desert vegetation or algae, soil moisture and minerals \u2013 mainly salt. On some of the brown \u2018islands\u2019 and on the shore in the lower right, we can see the east\u2013west sand ridges forming lines in the landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lake lies at the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, which covers nearly 285 000 sq km. Roads are scarce in the area, and often frequented by four-wheel drive adventurers. Roads include the Canning Stock Route about 300 km to the west of the image, or Tanami Track connecting Australia\u2019s Stuart Highway to the Great Northern Highway around 300 km to the east.<\/span><\/p>\n

This image, also featured on the<\/span> Earth from Space video programme<\/a>, was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite on 15 March.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it is still being calibrated following the 7 March launch, the satellite\u2019s main instrument is already delivering images, demonstrating its capability to map Earth\u2019s land, coast and inland water bodies. Once fully operational, the data will be made available to users for a variety of applications, free of charge.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brown hills speckle the eastern part of Australia\u2019s Lake MacKay in this satellite image. Located on the border of the states of Western Australia and Northern Territory, the salt lake only sees water after seasonal rainfall \u2013 if at all. It is classified as an ephemeral lake, meaning it exists only after precipitation. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2-300x240.jpg",300,240,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,561,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,481,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,481,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",611,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",449,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",81,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",640,513,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",96,77,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Lake_MacKay_Australia_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,120,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}