Star formation on aral sea island..

[IMG]http://img46.imagevenue.com/loc870/th_78249_google-1_122_870lo.jpg[/I MG]

[IMG]http://img104.imagevenue.com/loc829/th_78278_google-5_122_829lo.jpg[ /IMG]
does anybody know what this is?

Looks like a series of runways to me.

It does look like runways in an area with variable winds, with no prevailing wind direction. This pattern would allow planes to take off into the wind whatever direction it was coming from.

Yes, airbase runways. Interesting tidbits on the town it served...

Kantubek (Russian: Кантубек) was a town on Vozrozhdeniya Island (Uzbekistan) in the Aral Sea. The town is still found on maps, but is usually uninhabited, and lies in ruins today. Over the last decade, scavengers have picked the town clean. Kantubek used to have a population of approximately 1,500, and was the place the former Soviet Union government used to test Biological warfare. In the 1930s experiments were conducted on monkeys.

Brian Hayes, a biochemical engineer with the Pentagon's Threat Reduction Agency, led an expedition in the spring and summer of 2002 to neutralize what was likely the world's largest anthrax dumping grounds. His team of 113 people neutralized between 100 and 200 tons of anthrax over a three-month period. Cost of the cleanup operation was approximately $5,000,000.