Welcome to the second annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!

Even by Saharan standards, the Ténéré region of northern Niger is pretty desolate: a vast sea of sand, broken only by the occasional rocky outcrop, where barely an inch of rain falls each year. So it’s something of a surprise to see a huge picture of a DC-10 among the dunes.

The story behind this striking image is a tragic one: it is a memorial to UTA Flight 772, which was blown up by a suitcase bomb in the skies above this spot in 1989, killing 170 people¹. An investigation concluded that Libyan terrorists were to blame for the explosion, which occurred 46 minutes after the aircraft took off from N’Djamena International Airport in Chad, en route to Paris. (The flight had originated from Brazzaville, the capital city of Congo.)

The memorial was created in 2007, to mark the 18th anniversary of the disaster, by Les Familles de l’Attentat du DC-10 d’UTA, an association of the victims’ families. Financed by a compensation fund paid to the victims by the Libyan government, it was constructed by 100 people working largely by hand under the desert sun.

The life-size silhouette of the aircraft lies inside a circle more than 200ft in diameter, created using dark stones set into the sand. Surrounding this circle are 170 broken mirrors, representing those who died, and arrows marking the points of the compass. At the northern point, part of the right wing of the DC-10 has been erected as a monument, with a plaque commemorating the victims.

The association’s website (in French) includes a moving video of the crash site – still littered with perfectly preserved debris – and numerous photographs of the construction of the memorial. (These are large PDF files, but are well worth downloading as they give an idea of the stark beauty of the region as well as the impressive size of the memorial.)

Thanks to Tom Van Steen.

Right in the middle of the Sahara desert, in the dunes of northern Niger, there’s a circle which is clearly not a natural formation.

The circle itself is roughly 52 metres across, but if we zoom out a little, we can see eight other markings which mark the sides and corners of a huge square area, about 620 metres on each side.

This French website claims that French soldiers created similar looking circles and markings elsewhere in the Sahara “at the beginning of the aviation era”, although the reason why is unclear. Although the one in the article has no coverage yet National Geographic has a ground level photo of it.

However, very faintly visible above the circle are another set of markings, which might have once been a makeshift runway.

On closer examination, it seems that this particular circle has been “updated” since it was originally made. It’s a little hard to make out, but in the centre of the circle is the word “FACHI”, which it turns out, is the name of the nearest village.

See also the previously posted mysterious circle in a square in Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to Crash.

We’re continuing the first annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!

The Sahara is probably the world’s most famous desert, and covers much of northern Africa. However today we’re only looking at one tiny part of the desert, in the country of Niger.

It’s not obvious at first, but if you look closely at the top of this sand dune you’ll see what we think is a dust devil (which is like a tornado made of sand).

Sandstorms are common in the Sahara and the walls of sand can reach up to 6,000 metres high. In fact, so much sand is blown up into the air that the Earth has an atmospheric layer made up entirely of Sahara sand!

This image comes to Google Earth as part of the National Geographic Megaflyover project. See all our previous posts for more of the fantastic high-resolution images.

Read more on Dust Devils and the Sahara on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Yvan.