images

Scotland seen from space

by

ESA/Novapix

Reference

t-eueco-00001

Date

2009-08-15

This satellite image captures the green swirls of a phytoplankton bloom in the North Sea off the coast of eastern Scotland.
Phytoplankton, microscopic marine plants that drift near the surface of the sea, are by far the most abundant type of life found in the ocean.
The chlorophyll they collectively contain colour the ocean's waters, which provides a means of detecting these tiny organisms from space with dedicated ocean colour sensors, like Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument. MERIS acquired this image on 7 May 2008, working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.