Flush with record oil revenue, the most affluent of the United Arab Emirates has constructed some of the world’s most extravagant architecture on land as well as the unprecedented offshore sculptures, now large enough to be seen from space.

When NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the region on March 20, 2009, it was able to take advantage of the first day that clouds or sandstorms had not marred the Persian Gulf skies during much of March.

Easily seen just off the Dubai coast are three of the massive island projects that were under construction before plummeting oil prices and the global economic downturn cast doubts on the future of the emirate’s meteoric expansion.

The oval-shaped island complexes to the lower left are two of the Palm Islands, which were constructed from sand dredged from beneath the Persian Gulf.

They were created by spraying the sand into areas pinpointed by GPS technology to form their precise palm shapes.

The same technology is also being used to create The World, a far more ambitious project just to the northeast. It is becoming a man-made archipelago of 300 islets that will appear in the shape of a world map once completed. Distances between each island will be approximately 300 feet, according to developer Nakheel Properties.

Individual islands were originally priced at between $15 and $50 million. Commercial and residential construction costs could double the price of creating an island paradise on one.

Anyone wanting to buy into the scheme might want to wait for a few more months. Some economists are predicting that Dubai's land rush is over, and that prices may drop an additional 40 percent by the end of 2009.

The enlarged high-resolution image of The World to the upper right was acquired on February 5, 2009 by the ASTER imager on NASA’s Terra satellite. It reveals that only one tiny island, just to the west of of what is supposed to represent Greenland, has been landscaped. It appears as a single green dot among its sand-covered neighbors.

Satellite images: NASA