SPACEPHOTOS

One of the most beautifully folded mountain ranges in the world, the southern Zagros Mountains of western Iran can be seen in this south-southwest looking low oblique view. Pushed up by the collision of crustal plates, the Zagros Mountains were buckled into high folds, or anticlines, and depressions, or synclines. Extending from northwest to southeast is a broad zone of long parallel lines of enormous hogback ridges and deep intervening valleys (right center to upper center of the image). There are numerous salt marshes in many of the valleys, such as Lake Bakhtegan, visible in the lower left portion of the image. Iran’s major oil fields lie along the western foothills, where salt domes have trapped oil. The Persian Gulf is visible in the upper right portion of the image.