There are aspects to this photograph that make it fairly easy to identify in general, but probably hard to figure out exactly what it is. The colors are helpful. See if you can guess before reading on.
The image shows the desert of Kazakhstan, off the coast of the Caspian Sea. It was photographed by Canadian space tourist Guy Laliberte from the International Space Station, and is part of a new book of his images, "Gaia" (Assouline, June 2011) — check out a full gallery of Laliberte's images here.
Laliberte is the founder of Cirque du Soleil. He paid his way to the space station via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009. Talk about favorite vacation photos!
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