On Nov. 27, 2011, a series of dust storms blew off Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula. This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer  (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The MODIS instrument is part of NASA’s mission to understand the global dynamics of the Earth. This imaging device circles the globe on board the Aqua and Terra satellites every one to two days, acquiring information “across 36 spectral bands, or groups of wavelengths.”