Image: Dust Storm Strikes Gobi Desert

A dust storm was spotted raging across the Gobi Desert by a NASA satellite Tuesday (Nov. 27).

The desert, which covers parts of southern Mongolia and northern China, is "one of the world's most prolific dust-producing regions," according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The 800,000 square miles (1,300,000 square kilometers) of the Gobi are not just one big sand sea — they include grasslands, bare rock and ephemeral lakes. Some of the dust from the dust storm captured by NASA's Aqua satellite apparently came from the fine sediments around just such a lake along the China-Mongolia border, called Gaxun Nu, the Earth Observatory said. Those sediments are lighter in color that the dust further to the east.

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The Gobi is the largest desert in Asia and the fourth largest desert in the world.

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