In this image, the <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mountain" class="mw-redirect" title="Mountain">mountain</a> and the ridge-line of the <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Andes" title="Andes">Andes</a> dominates the scene. Vegetation in the area rarely grows at elevations above 4,000 meters, so this natural-colour scene centred on the <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/River" title="River">river</a> <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Valley" title="Valley">valley</a> of the Horcones River appears very barren. The ridge-line to the west (left in this image) marks the international border with <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chile" title="Chile">Chile</a> and <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Argentina" title="Argentina">Argentina</a>, and although Aconcagua is taller than any of the ridge-line mountains, much of the moisture from the humid <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean" title="Pacific Ocean">Pacific</a> <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Air" title="Category:Air">air</a> is already wrung from the <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere" title="Atmosphere">atmosphere</a> before reaching Argentina, leaving a “<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rain" title="Rain">rain</a> <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Shadow" title="Shadow">shadow</a>” which makes the climate around Aconcagua relatively arid. The image  also shows a wider area around the mountain, including Santiago, the Chilean capital city, to the south and east of the mountain.
University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility
2010-06-16
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=3542">NASA Earth Observatory</a>