File:Aïr Mountains in Niger (MODIS).jpg

English: The Aïr Mountains, which rise starkly upwards from the tan sands of the Sahara Desert, have been described as “a fabulously desolate landscape of rugged mountains and immense sand seas”. This mountain range has volcanic peaks and deep valleys, creating ecosystems that support a wide variety of flora and fauna not found in other parts of the Sahara Desert.

Covering roughly 84,000 square kilometers (32,400 square miles) in northern Niger, the dark round domes of the Aïr Mountains began to form in ancient Precambrian times. Magma flowed into pre-existing cracks and caverns in the bedrock, creating a geologic formation called a dike. The bubble-shaped mounds are ring dikes, which formed when the ceiling of a magma chamber collapsed, leaving a circular crack that was later filled with magma. Through constant movement of the Earth’s crust over an extensive time frame, the mountains slowly rose upwards from the surrounding landscape, creating a spectacular set of massifs that now rise to 2,000 meters (7,000 feet).

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the Aïr Mountains and surrounding desert on October 29, 2023.