Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission took this amazing photo of south-central Morocco, showing the city of Ouarzazate, the Anti-Atlas Mountains and the Ouarzazate solar power plant.
What is it?
This false color image of south-central Morocco was taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission and released on European Space Agency website on 20 February 2026.
The image shows the northern edge of the Anti-Atlas Mountains, which lie just below the city of Ouarzazate. The upper half of the image is dominated by a vast desert landscape, which is home to the Ouarzazate solar power plant.
We can see striking contrasts from the colored areas, with vast areas of vegetation shown in bright red, and the El Mansour Eddahbi reservoir, shown as a deep, dark blue. The photo was taken in January 2026, during the rainy season, which means that we can also clearly see the rivers and tributaries that flow into the reservoir.
Why is it special?
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, which captured these images, consists of three satellites sitting in low earth orbit. The Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites were launched in June 2015 and March 2017 respectively, with Sentinel-2C joining them in orbit in 2024.
Since this is a false-color image that has been processed with Sentinel-2’s near-infrared channel, the vegetation appears with a striking red hue. This is because plants reflect more near-infrared than green light, resulting in a bright red color.
We can also see the staggering size of the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, also called the Noor (Arabic for “light”) power station. This mammoth site covers over 3,000 hectares – almost as big as the city itself – and is the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant.
