You’re staring right into the “Eye of the Sahara,” a mysterious site located in Mauritania, West Africa.

The breathtaking photograph, taken by Dutch Astronaut Andre Kuipers, offers a close-up glimpse of the massive rock formation (40 kilometers in diameter) known as the Richat structure from the International Space Station as it swung over the Sahara Desert on the Atlantic Coast. The image was captured on March 7 with a Nikon D2Xs camera, according to officials at the European Space Agency.

Long thought to be an Asteroid crater, further examination by experts found that the site’s features were unique and lacked signs of shock metamorphism, a form of land deformation usually left in the wake of such a powerful impact. For instance, an analysis of rock samples did not turn up any Coesite, a form of silicon dioxide that’s created in the aftermath of a sizable impact or atomic explosion. And recent evidence suggests that the various layers of rock were actually shaped by natural geological processes such as erosion and hydrothermal waters.