A dust storm was spotted raging across the Gobi Desert by a NASA satellite Tuesday November  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.