When something is referred to as "Europe's biggest hole", it's not likely to be a pretty sight.

As the biggest Opencast Coal Mining Pit of Germany, the Hambach opencast mine sprawls across 85 square kilometres in Germany's Lower Rhine basin. Giant excavators mine lignite – aka brown coal – at a rate of up to 240,000 tonnes a day. That's about equal to a football stadium piled 30 metres high with coal.

For photographer Bernhard Lang, who shot a series of aerial photos of the mine in May, capturing Hambach from above was the key to conveying its scale. "Watching these huge machines biting into the barren landscape reminded me of alien planets in science fiction movies," Lang says. "It's a really direct image of the human impact on Earth."

Everything at the mine is at a giant scale: The machines inside, scooping out coal and moving around sand and dirt, are each the height of 30-story office buildings and twice as long as soccer fields.

The Hambach mine is expected to have exhausted its lignite reserves by 2040, at which point it will be converted into an artificial lake, filled with 4 billion cubic metres of water from the Rhine.

(All images cpoyrighted Bernhard Lang)

>> Gallery: Coal Mine

>> Photographer: Bernhard Lang