• MODIS Pic of the Day 24 May 2022

    From Dan Richter@1:317/3 to All on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 12:00:08
    May 24, 2022 - Sediment in the Caspian Sea

    Black Sea
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    The Caspian Sea wins the prize for being the largest closed body on
    Earth, with a volume estimate at about 78,000 cubic kilometers and
    spanning a surface area of roughly 146,720 square miles (380,000 square
    kilometers). That’s a surface area larger than the country of Germany.

    The Caspian Sea is sometimes divided into three parts, ecologically
    speaking. In the north, the sea is shallow, with a mean depth of only
    about 32 feet (10 meters), while the central sea deepens to 2,585 feet
    (788 meters). The deepest part of the Caspian Sea reaches 3,363 feet
    (1,025 meters) in the southern section.

    Despite the deep water, the southeastern Caspian Sea just off the coast
    of Turkmenistan hosts a wide area of marine shallows, where the
    mud-covered bottom lies under a layer of water that stays less than 98
    feet (30 meters). This coastal shelf stretches 124 miles (200 km) from
    north to south and 75 miles (120 km) from the shoreline into the sea.
    Beyond this shelf, the seafloor takes a deep plunge; however, the
    waters over the shelf are perpetually turbid as the ever-active wind
    stirs mud and sediment up from the shallows.

    On May 23, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
    (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
    brightly-colored sediment in the Caspian Sea off of the coast of
    Turkmenistan. A small bit of the coast of Iran is also visible at the
    bottom of the image. The gorgeous color lies almost entirely over the
    shelf of marine shallows located in this section of the of the Caspian
    Sea.

    Image Facts
    Satellite: Terra
    Date Acquired: 5/23/2022
    Resolutions: 1km (174 KB), 500m (422 KB), 250m (892.4 KB)
    Bands Used: 1,4,3
    Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



    https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-05-24

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