Astronaut's Haunting Encounter: Giant Skull Gazes Back From Earth
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a photo of a skull-shaped feature on the Earth's surface, which turned out to be a volcanic crater in the Sahara Desert. The eerie image, shared by NASA on Halloween, shows a 3,300-foot-wide caldera known as Trou au Natron, with its "eyes" and "nose" formed by cinder cones and its "mouth" and left cheek covered in a mineral crust called natron. The skull's distinctive shape is created by the shadow cast by the crater's rim. The crater was once a glacial lake and is located near Tarso Toussidé, a potentially active stratovolcano.