The Sahara is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
A satellite image of the Sahara by NASA WorldWind
An oasis in the Ahaggar Mountains. Oases support some life forms in extremely arid deserts.
Sand dunes in the Algerian Sahara
North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.
The population density of Africa as of 2000
Bedouin women in Tunisia in 1922
A market in Biskra in Algeria in 1899
The kasbah of Aït Benhaddou in Morocco