Powerful winds and dry conditions caused a massive blanket of dust from Australia’s Outback to spread eastward across Queensland and New South Wales. This image was acquired on September 22, 2009 from the nadir (vertical-viewing) camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. The width of the scene is 380 km and the extent from north to south is 564 km. Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands are visible in the eastern portion of the image, about one-third of the way down from the northern edge. These islands are located just off Australia’s eastern coast, near the city of Brisbane. This image is from Terra orbit 51939

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.