Spot the city from space
Each round shows a real satellite picture, about 6 km across, of somewhere in the UAE. Tap the map where you think it was taken. Coastline, dunes, mountains and road patterns are your clues.
How to read a picture from space
Image analysts start the same way you just did: with shape, texture and colour, before any labels.
- Which coast?The Arabian Gulf coast is long, flat and full of lagoons and islands. The east coast on the Gulf of Oman is short, with mountains running down to the sea.
- Water colourPale turquoise means shallow water over sand. Dark blue means deep water. Dredged channels and marinas show up as sharp dark lines.
- Dunes or rock?Orange, rippled sand points to the southern and western desert. Dark, folded rock means the Hajar Mountains in the east, or Jebel Hafeet near Al Ain.
- The street patternLong straight runways, tight grids, ring roads and man-made islands each have a shape you can learn to recognise.
Why this matters on the ground
In the desert, a wadi or the mountains, a landmark is often all you have. If you call 999 (police), 998 (ambulance) or 997 (civil defence), say what you can see around you, and share your live location from your phone's map app if you can.
The two Sentinel-2 satellites photograph the same spot about every five days. Scientists use the pictures to follow floods, dust, farms, mangroves and growing cities.
That's enough to see a stadium, a runway or a new road, but not a car or a person. Free satellite pictures can't spot you in your garden.
Satellite pictures: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 data (2026), from the European Union's Copernicus programme run with the European Space Agency (ESA). Copernicus data are free and open to use with this credit. Pictures taken on 19 and 22 October 2026, shown in true colour, about 6 km across. Map borders: Natural Earth (public domain). Place facts from UAE government and emirate authority websites, the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi and Dubai Airports. Orbit height, revisit time and pixel size from ESA's Sentinel-2 mission pages. Game by Mariam Alzaabi.