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Ocean Sand, Bahamas

Image of the Day for September 13, 2002

Tides and ocean currents have sculpted the sand and seaweed beds into multicolored, fluted patterns.

NASA Earth Observatory

Sep 13, 2002
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2001-01-17 00:00:00
January 17, 2001

Though the above image may resemble a new age painting straight out of an art gallery in Venice Beach, California, it is in fact a satellite image of the sands and seaweed in the Bahamas. The image was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) instrument aboard the Landsat 7 satellite. Tides and ocean currents in the Bahamas sculpted the sand and seaweed beds into these multicolored, fluted patterns in much the same way that winds sculpted the vast sand dunes in the Sahara Desert.

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Image courtesy Serge Andrefouet, University of South Florida.

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