Stunning image of sediment plumes in Gulf of Mexico

This blog has moved to Wired Science (as of Sept 14, 2010)

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I was alerted to this image from a reader and also saw it linked to on geology.com/news and just had to share it.

Absolutely beautiful patterns of sediment plumes mixing with each other and surrunding water in the Gulf of Mexico from NASA’s Earth Observatory website. The image was taken last week a few hours after Tropical Storm Ida passed by to the east of here. The waves associated with the storm churned up the sediment on the shelf. The limit of sediment with the dark blue water to the south essentially marks the edge of the continental shelf. Click on the images below, or here, to read more about this image.

The next image below zooms in a bit on the image showing distinctive brown plumes coming from rivers.

Wow.

I just love looking at the patterns nature produces.

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(note: I slightly modified the ‘levels’ of these images in Photoshop to enhance them a bit)